'I've lost £200,000 after being scammed by rogue builder

JESSICA Reader is ready to enjoy her first weekend in a long time. She's heading out with her sister and aunt to toast the end of three years of hell which pushed her to thoughts of suicide.

- JONATHON HILL

In January 2022, the veterinary surgeon from Wenvoe, Vale of Glamorgan, stumbled across an advert in the Glamorgan Star newspaper for a builder named Michael Anderson.

He had been in the business for more than 50 years and Jessica decided he seemed the right person to build her an eco home on land her parents own near Wenvoe Golf Club.

"He seemed so nice, genuinely," Jessica says from the sitting room of her parents' home, without which, she says, she would effectively now be homeless.

"He was like a grandfather-type figure. Very warm and had an answer for everything. He also came across as having a fantastic knowledge of planning matters, which I didn’t, so I decided he was the perfect person to build my home."

Within months, she realised Anderson, 76, was not all he made himself out to be.

"He'd told me I wouldn’t need planning permission when it turned out I actually did," she said. "That's when I first started to worry."

Jessica had told Anderson she had a budget of £70,000 but within weeks he had talked her into stumping up £131,000, which she paid in full.

What Anderson put together was a shell of a building with a sagging roof where water was collecting in the centre.

It remained that way for months, and as the time passed she began to suspect Anderson had no intention of completing the project she had paid him to do.

By the summer of 2023 Jessica finally obtained planning permission for her home but by the October she had a breakdown after repeated no-shows from Anderson.

"He had this charming way about him," she said.

"He was an expert in kicking things down the road again and again.

"He told me four times he had Covid, then it was the weather, then he couldn’t get the labour. But towards the end he just stopped answering my calls and I realised that was it.

"He'd taken off with my money and wasn’t going to build my home.