A TRADESMAN took payments from a customer for work he had no way of completing.

Gary Roberts, of Old Spot Way in Winsford, has been disqualified by The Insolvency Service for 10 years.

It comes after his company, GR Developments 1 Limited (GRD), accepted prepayments from customers despite being insolvent and having 'no reasonable prospect of being able to complete the contracted works'.

The 59-year-old is now banned from being the director of any company with links to the UK, as well as running, forming or marketing any company, for the next decade.

According to The Insolvency Service, as of May 10, 2021, GRD’s bank balance stood at £7,310 and it had no evidence of any assets.

In fact, it owed around £20,000, including a county court judgment of £7,317.

Despite this, GRD obtained a £10,000 prepayment from a customer for domestic building works.

Mr Roberts began the process of putting the company into liquidation and signed the terms of engagement with an insolvency practitioner, paying them £3,600 using funds he had received from the customer.

In June a further county court judgement to the sum £9,331 was issued to GRD and so Mr Roberts obtained a second payment from the customer, amounting to £7,000.

The company then ceased trading on or around July 9 and entered liquidation on August 11.

At this point, GRD had estimated debts of £77,067 with £11,543 of this owed to HMRC and £65,525 to trade, expense and consumer creditors.

The works for which the £17,000 prepayments were made had not been finished, with the completed work estimated to have cost around £4,000.

Meanwhile, analysis of the company’s bank statements revealed from May 24, when the insolvency practitioner was instructed, to July 9, the company received £9,040 and spent £22,576, of which a little more than half went to Mr Roberts.

Mr Roberts failed to deliver accounting records for GRD from incorporation on November 19, 2019, to the date of liquidation.

As such, The Insolvency Service has said it was not possible to determine why he had paid himself £23,356 on top of his wage payments of £5,894.

It is also unclear why payments totalling £4,734 had been made to various unknown parties between November 30, 2020, and June 7, 2021; whether the company had any debtors owing the company money; or whether the company had any assets which it had not yet declared.

GRD was officially dissolved on January 12 last year and the disqualification order against Mr Roberts was issued on February 16, 2024.