A building business left thousands of pounds of work unfinished after collapsing into liquidation.
Patrick Doherty, a professor at King’s College London, hired a Norwich company called Tailored Construction Ltd to convert the garage at his Wroxham home last summer into a studio with a bathroom.
Over several months he paid £48,000 of the £53,000 quote, but the project was left in December with no bathroom, doors, windows or electrics.
The tiling and plumbing was also not done and the floor not laid, he said. He estimates that he is almost £10,000 out of pocket after paying for work and goods which he never received.
The project began in the autumn, but weeks after starting, director Stewart Wright put Tailored Construction into liquidation with debts of £87,000. He transferred the work to a second company called Tailored Construction Projects Ltd. Mr Wright said he did that to try to finish the job.
But Mr Doherty, 63, said he was never told that the business he had hired had collapsed nor that his project had been transferred to another company.
Last month, after researching online, and with much of his project still not complete, he found out about the liquidation.
The company's liquidator said Tailored Construction went into liquidation because of “difficult trading conditions, and rising materials prices".
Mr Wright said that the second company he set up to finish the job faced similar problems and was also now going into liquidation.
“We got too big too fast,” he said. “We didn’t set out to end this way. We had two jobs which we caught a massive cold on. The profit just disappeared.”
He said it had left him in debt and he had not taken a salary or dividend from either company.
“I’ve had 10 months of sleepless nights and stress over this and there have been moments where I felt sick and just wish I had never done anything with it," Mr Wright told this newspaper.
“We had a £20,000-a-week wage bill at one point so when it came off the rails it came off quite spectacularly. I just want closure on it and to go back to a quiet life."
He apologised and said there were two other customers in a similar situation to Mr Doherty.
“Ultimately the responsibility sits on my shoulders," he added. "I’m genuinely sorry he (Mr Doherty) is in this situation.”
Mr Doherty, however, said he intends to sue for “wilful misrepresentation” because he said he was not told about the liquidation nor the transfer of his project to the second company.
He wrote in his claim: “Mr Wright had established a new company with a very similar name to Tailored Construction and to all intents and purposes operated it with the same staff and along the same lines for the same business purpose.
"To my mind his failure to inform me that my project was being transferred to his new company can be taken as an act of wilful misrepresentation.”
He added: “I felt relieved when I found out (about the liquidation) because I finally knew where I stood. The work they did was good but it was not finished. It really, really was stressful.”
He said he had paid for French doors which were never delivered and he said when he contacted the supplier, they told him the order had been cancelled. He is now paying contractors to finish the job.
Mr Doherty, a father-of-two, never met Mr Wright and said all the work was led by an employee of Tailored Construction called Rowan Parker.
Mr Parker featured in this newspaper in 2020 when three customers came forward to complain about his company leaving their projects incomplete and not doing work, they had paid him for.
But Mr Doherty said he decided to go ahead with the job because Tailored Construction had good reviews online and Mr Parker is not a shareholder or director of Tailored Construction.
Mr Parker has also been contacted for comment.
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-We would like to make it clear that Tailored Construction Ltd is not in any way connected to Tailored Building East Anglia Ltd whose directors are Andy Lees and Pender Butler. It's website can be visited at tailoredbuilding.com
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