Cowboy builder jailed after he turned mother’s dream home into a nightmare
A COWBOY builder left a mother’s home at risk of falling down after fleecing her out of almost £ 30,000 for shoddy work he never completed.
Andrew Tedstill had been hired by Affy Paul to build an extension but cut through cables, leaving her without any heating and electricity in part of her property for months.
Tedstill, 40, also knocked down doorways without providing support above, leaving connecting walls at risk of collapse.
Building inspectors said his work was so structurally unsound it was ‘more luck than judgment’ that no one had been hurt.
However, when Mrs Paul confronted Tedstill he threatened to knock down the walls he had built. He has now been jailed for seven months after a prosecution by Wolverhampton Trading Standards. Tedstill, who admitted unfair trading by recklessly breaching professional diligence at Wolverhampton Crown Court, was branded ‘belligerent and bullying’ by the judge.
Mrs Paul has since had to find another £20,000 to put right his work. The 47-year-old, who lives with sons, Avinash, 22, and Tristan, 21, said: ‘This is my dream home and after losing my mum and going through a divorce, this was meant to be something positive. ‘But I feel like he took advantage of my vulnerability and now the house looks like a bomb site. He could have caused my whole house to collapse. I will have to cope with the fall-out for the rest of my life.’
Mrs Paul employed Tedstill in December 2015 to build an extension and landscape the garden of her home in Penn, Wolverhampton. She paid around £15,000 as work began but said Tedstill would move on to each stage of the project without finishing the previous one.
When she told him she was not happy with the work, he became aggressive and told her he would knock down the walls he had already built. ‘He was shouting in my face,’ she said.
She paid him a total of £29,000 but a building expert at Wolverhampton Trading Standards estimated that what Tedstill had done amounted to just £5,000 of work.
The extension roof was poorly made and inadequately supported and walls at the front and rear were structurally unsound. ‘It is more luck than judgment that there has not been a significant impact on the premises,’ they said.