Last updated at 12:45, Monday, 22 June 2009

A Penrith builder who cold-called two vulnerable pensioners and convinced them they needed roofing work done on their homes has had his antisocial behaviour order quashed by top judges on appeal.

Lewis Thomas Gilbertson, 25, of Lakeland View, cold-called Olga Rumney, 69, and Constance Kennedy, 85, and persuaded them to employ him to carry out work to their roofs. He charged them £170 and £220 respectively to do the work – which both later complained about.

Neither of the pensioners was told in writing – as was their right – that they could cancel the work.

Gilbertson admitted two counts of fraud by misrepresentation and two breaches of consumer protection law at Carlisle Crown Court in December last year and was jailed for nine months, suspended for two years.

In January of this year he was also handed an antisocial behaviour order, which prohibited him from making unsolicited calls to private dwelling houses in person in order to obtain building, maintenance or gardening work.

However, Mr Justice King, sitting alongside Lord Justice Scott Baker and Judge Christopher Moss at London’s Criminal Appeal Court, has now said that the Asbo was “impractical” to enforce and quashed it.

“If the order is impractical to police, then it will achieve nothing,” said the judge.

“In our judgement, it is difficult to understand how [this order] can be said to have been necessary in this particular case. There is, in reality, no practical way of policing this order.”

“It cannot serve the purpose for which it was intended, namely to provide the police with a means of taking preventative steps.”

Mr Justice King said he “accepted that these offences were committed in the way they were against vulnerable elderly householdersm” and that Gilbertson’s offending had caused them both distress, but ruled the Asbo was not workable.

First published at 11:24, Monday, 22 June 2009
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk