A PARTIALLY sighted and disabled woman is to be fully compensated by the builders who made a “shoddy” mess of her kitchen extension.

Recorder Benjamin Nolan QC warned Jeremy Paul White and Robert Montgomery that he will have them back in court and re-sentence them if they don’t hand over £10,000 by Friday. Montgomery will then pay £300 a month until the woman receives all the £13,870 they cost her.

York Press:

“She relied on you to do a proper job. You did anything but,” the judge told them at York Crown Court. “The pair of you were running a completely shoddy company and took the complainant for a ride. When the two of you were challenged about the unsatisfactory nature of the work, your responses were both unpleasant, uncivil and disturbing. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

Patrizia Doherty, prosecuting for City of York Council, said the victim used the website ratedpeople.com to find builders she thought she could rely on.

She needed the extension to her York home because of her disability.

White, 62, and Montgomery, 39, who operated as Ripon Building Specialists, used the website to get the contract and produced an extension that had unsafe electrical cabling, a faulty roof, rising damp, wrongly installed doors and windows and pipework that would have flooded her house had she used it, among other flaws.

When she and City of York Council building control tried to get the pair to put the faults right, they became aggressive and threatening and the woman felt compelled to remove the negative rating she had given them on the website.

White, of Hauxwell, Richmond, Swaledale, will pay the woman £8,000 plus £3,000 to the council and Montgomery, of Church Street, Kirby Malzeard, near Ripon, will pay £5,870 compensation, plus £800 to the council. White was given a 13-month prison sentence and Montgomery a 10-month sentence, both suspended for two years.

Both admitted a charge of aggressive and unprofessional trading. White has a previous conviction for running a company and having a credit account when an undischarged bankrupt.

For White, Abdul Shakoor said he had borrowed money to pay back the victim and had tried to resolve the problems. For Montgomery, Ayesha Smart said he had learnt his lesson.

Cllr Nigel Ayre, of the council’s executive, said: “Carrying out work that is deliberately substandard and unfinished would have a significant impact on most people.

“But to knowingly inflict that on a vulnerable resident is far, far worse and this prosecution shows that we will do our utmost to protect residents from unscrupulous traders.”