Two companies, one sole trader and £136,000 in customer losses: the commercial lessons from a rogue builder case

What happened

Sean Patrick Gartland, 54, of Ingoldmells, Lincolnshire, was jailed for 32 months at Derby Crown Court on 27 August after admitting two counts of fraudulent trading and one count of carrying on a business for a fraudulent purpose. Derbyshire County Council, whose trading standards team began investigating in January 2022, said customers across Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire were left more than £136,000 out of pocket. He was disqualified from acting as a company director for seven years and made subject to a seven-year Criminal Behaviour Order barring him from offering building services direct to consumers, except as an employee of a business owned by a third party whose director knows of his convictions.

Does this affect you?

Directly, this is a narrow story: householders in Dronfield, Killamarsh, Bilsthorpe, Rotherham and Sheffield, and anyone who worked alongside or behind Gartland’s businesses. If you only do main contractor or commercial work, you can stop here.

It matters more widely if you do domestic extensions, conversions or home improvement work, or if you sub-sub for a small builder who takes payments direct from homeowners. The pattern the court heard about — escalating demands for money to carry on work already started, then walking off — is the thing to recognise, because you can be the man on site when it happens.

Subby Mate: if you are on the tools

The one thing: If you are on a domestic job right now for a builder who keeps asking the homeowner for more money before the next stage, ring that builder today and ask when you are getting paid for what you have already done. Do not wait for your next invoice date.

• The court heard Gartland demanded escalating payments to continue work he had already started, then in many cases abandoned it. If a builder above you is doing that, the homeowner’s money is running out and yours is the payment that will not come. If you say nothing and keep working, you are funding the last two weeks of a job that is about to stop.
• Take photos on your phone of your own work at the end of every day on a domestic job — what you did, and the state of what was there before. In this case the council described a chimney breast and supporting wall removed with no remedial support, gas pipework left dangerous, and a staircase later considered unsafe. If a job goes bad, someone will be asked which trade did what. Without dated photos you are arguing from memory against a homeowner and a trading standards officer.
• If you are asked to carry on someone else’s unfinished work — a part-built extension, a boiler that has been pulled out — say on the phone before you start: “I’ll price my own work, but I’m not taking on what’s already there until it’s been checked.” Gartland’s victims had to pay other contractors to finish projects or make homes safe. If you pick up an unsafe job without drawing a line under what you inherited, you can end up owning the defect.

If you are a subcontractor QS

• The three offences ran through different vehicles: New Looks Building Services Ltd (June 2019 to April 2021), a sole trader period (April 2021 to January 2023), and Sawuk Building Services Ltd (January 2023 to November 2024). Where you supply small domestic builders, run your credit check against the trading entity on the order, not the name on the van, and re-check when the entity on your paperwork changes. A change of vehicle mid-relationship is the thing to price for.
• Trading standards began investigating in January 2022 but the offending continued to November 2024 — nearly three more years. Do not treat “no adverse filings” as safety on domestic-facing accounts. For that segment, use payment behaviour on your own ledger as the earlier signal, and set a credit limit you can afford to lose rather than one the customer asks for.
• Where your firm does second-tier work behind a domestic builder, you are usually outside the Construction Act protections that apply to commercial construction contracts on residential occupier work. Get your own position checked by someone who has read your contract before you rely on a suspension or adjudication route — assuming you have it and finding you do not is an expensive way to learn.
• Price stage payments against completed, inspected work rather than time elapsed, and keep the value of work-in-hand small on domestic jobs. The £136,000 loss here was spread across multiple customers precisely because money went in ahead of value coming out.

If you are a main contractor QS

• The seven-year Criminal Behaviour Order does not stop Gartland working — it permits him to operate as an employee of a third-party-owned business whose director knows of his convictions. Your PQQ and supply-chain onboarding should ask about disqualifications and orders affecting individuals, not only the company, because a director disqualification of seven years does not remove someone from a site.
• Three trading entities in five and a half years is the pattern worth building into your approval process: check whether a supply-chain firm’s directors have previously traded under a different company covering the same work and the same geography. That is a Companies House exercise, and it is the kind of check a small subcontractor cannot do but you can.
• If any part of your business touches consumer work, note that a county council trading standards team drove this prosecution from complaints, not a client or an insurer. Complaint handling on residential jobs is an enforcement risk route, and it operates on a different timeline from your contractual one.

Risks and what to do about them

• Working behind a builder whose funding comes from escalating consumer payments — cap your exposure by agreeing shorter payment stages and stopping the moment one is missed, rather than carrying two or three stages of unpaid work.
• Inheriting an unsafe or unfinished structure — the council described a chimney breast and supporting wall removed without remedial support. Record in writing, before you start, what condition you found and what you are not taking responsibility for.
• Entity-hopping in your supply chain — where a supplier or subcontractor’s invoicing entity changes, treat it as a new account with a new credit limit, not a continuation of an existing relationship.
• Gas and structural work left by others — this case included a removed boiler with gas pipework left in a dangerous condition and an unsafe staircase. Do not certify, sign off or build on top of another trade’s incomplete work in those disciplines without a competent check first.

Do this week

Ten minutes: Pick your largest domestic job in progress. Check on your phone how much work you have done that you have not yet been paid for. If it is more than one stage payment, ring the builder or homeowner today and ask for the current one before you do any more.

A day, if you can spare it: This is genuinely a full day. Go through every domestic-facing customer on your ledger, identify the exact legal entity you are contracting with on each, check it against Companies House, and set a written credit limit per account that you could absorb losing. Then write those limits down where whoever answers the phone can see them.