A COWBOY builder left a couple’s home in a shambles and made off with £100,00 of their money, with the wife claiming the stress contributed to her miscarriage.
Andy Clarke and his then pregnant wife Lisa forked out £98,000 to Michael Parr for a fifth bedroom and an extra bathroom to their home, which also needed an extra floor and the roof replacing.
But after working on the property for three months, Parr and his workers stopped turning up at the house in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, leaving the home covered in scaffolding, exposed to the weather and without their extension.
The couple were then forced to pay out a further £150,000 to another firm to complete the work.
Teacher Lisa believes the stress was a contributing factor to her miscarriage which she suffered while the house lay in ruins.
Andy told the Daily Mail: “We have recovered no money to date.
“We won a high court case against Parr but bailiffs failed to retrieve anything as Parr never answered the door.
“I approached both my bank, First Direct, and two receiving banks and none of them were interested. They refused to acknowledge it was fraud and therefore wouldn’t reverse any transactions.”
He then took the matter further contacting the bosses of the banks and the financial ombudsman but said he got “nowhere” with them saying it was their fault and a “valid transaction”.
On October 3, Parr was sentenced to two years and eight months at Nottingham Crown Court.
Andy added that at the beginning everything was “perfectly fine” and thought Parr initially “seemed like a reasonable guy”.
However, it wasn’t long before they’d been left with their home “torn to bits”.
He said the stress was “horrendous” and it was thought to have been one of the triggers of his wife’s miscarriage.
Andy added that while they were pleased Parr had been given a prison sentence they still felt angry about the situation.
The Clarkes first met Parr in January 2019 for a quote as well as viewing completed projects and read client testimonials, eventually agreeing a price of £106,900 for the work to be carried out.
To pay for the extension they re-mortgaged their home and paid the first instalment of £33,881 with the work starting in April.
They were told it would be completed by August.
At first, everything seemed to be going as expected but while they continued to make the weekly payments, Parr and his team began showing up less frequently.
Andy said Parr used an endless list of excuses, including suppliers going bankrupt and the poor weather.
Then Parr simply stopped showing up at all in July 2019.
The penultimate payment was made in July, with just £8,000 due to paid once the extension was completed.
But by August, the couple were worried.
Communicating with Parr via texts and emails, the builder claimed he need a time extension, with Andy saying Parr had initially told them there had been a delay with the roof trusses then claimed he couldn’t work in the rain.
It then dawned on Andy that Parr wasn’t coming back.
When Andy threatened legal action, Parr said the tresses would be delivered by December 17.
Nothing happened though and Parr simply vanished.
Andy reported the situation to the police and called in a chartered surveyor to make an assessment.
He said the surveyor told them that around 30 per cent of the work had been completed but around half of that needed redoing as it had been done to a poor standard.
To get the work done, the pair took out £50,000 equity on the house and also used loans and credit card payments, as well as a bonus Andy received from work.
The extension was eventually completed in August 2022, 16 months after Parr had begun.
Andy said they are still feeling the impact to this day as they had to borrow money to cover the cost and they are still paying it off.
They are feeling the financial strain and have had to make “sacrifices” and their disposable income has taken a hit.
Investigations by the police uncovered that Andy and Lisa were not the only victims of Parr.
Parr pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud by false representation.
While one count related to Andy and Lisa, the second was connected to a victim in Northamptonshire who had paid Parr more than £35,000.
A proceeds of crime hearing is set for January 16.
Andy said that now sentencing had been done, they were relieved to be able to draw a line under it all.
However, he added that he thought the system was “broken” as they were still out of pocket to the tune of £100,000 and were unlikely to ever get the money back.
While he said “some justice” had been done, it wasn’t “restorative justice”.
A spokesperson for First Direct said: ‘We deeply sympathise with Mr Clarke and the stress he endured when the work on his property was not completed in 2019.
‘When the customer reported that he was unhappy with the works carried out by the builder, our investigation ruled this to be a civil dispute based on the information we had at the time.
“This included the fact the complaint regarded the quality of work done and that it had not completed. This position was upheld by the Financial Ombudsman Service.
‘However, we appreciate that new information may now be available and we will review this accordingly.
“We have reopened our investigation and will be in touch with Mr Clarke in due course.”
