Builder's prison sentence suspended after appeal

A builder who took more than £200,000 for incomplete or poor quality work while his company was in debt has had his prison sentence suspended at the Court of Appeal.

Michael Haslam, from Derby, was sentenced in July to two years and four months in prison, of which he was told he would serve 40% before being released on licence.

At a hearing on Wednesday, Lady Justice Whipple described it as "an unusual case" because the judge sentencing the 74-year-old had suggested he would not go to prison before he pleaded guilty.

Haslam's sentence will now be suspended for two years with a rehabilitation order and unpaid work requirement of 160 hours.

After Haslam, of Oaklands Avenue, Littleover, was sentenced he was given bail until a hearing at the Court of Appeal.

Paul Stimson, for Haslam, told an earlier hearing that because Judge Shaun Smith KC had suggested Haslam would not go to prison, it was unfair to then sentence him to 28 months' immediate custody.

Lady Justice Whipple said: "Judges are entitled to change their minds and we entirely follow the judge's reasons for doing so in this case.

"However, the resulting custodial sentence does leave us with a sense of injustice, because it did not match the appellant's expectation, which expectation had been created by the judge at the earlier hearings."

Throughout 2021 and 2022 Haslam took money from customers who he either charged for incomplete work or materials that never arrived, or built to such a poor standard that it had to be redone by other tradesmen.

In a judgment Lady Justice Whipple said it was "borderline between suspension and immediate custody".

She said Judge Smith could have "gone either way" and the judge had changed his mind after reading the impact of Haslam's work on the families, which she described as "devastating – financially, emotionally and psychologically".

One woman, who lived with her partner and baby, paid Haslam more than £47,000 up front to his personal account in the spring of 2022.

After less than three months, the work stopped and the property was "left unsafe and without running water", before Haslam told the woman his company was likely to go into liquidation.

Another woman with two adult children with special needs paid him nearly £18,000 "for work which was never completed and materials which were never ordered", Lady Justice Whipple said.

She added: "She was later told by the local council that the work done by the appellant's company was such that she would be better having it demolished and rebuilt rather than trying to fix it.

"She has not yet been able to raise sufficient funds to do that."

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