A rogue builder who destroyed customers’ homes and defrauded seven families out of £147,000 has been jailed.
Lee Slocombe, 40, ran Swansea-based firm Kamlee Builders and was paid huge sums of money for building work which was either unnecessary, incomplete, or well below standard.
Swansea Crown Court heard one couple paid more than £18,000 for work which a chartered surveyor testified would have normally cost less than £600 and taken an hour to complete.
Another family paid out more than £78,000 for work and to rectify problems caused by Slocombe.
To pay the huge bill they had to take out several loans to pay it off.
In another case a concerned family member complained to Swansea Council’s Trading Standards in 2018 regarding work being carried out at a property in Morriston.
The family had been quoted £1,000 for works to treat damp at their home but it eventually rocketed to a bill of more than £60k and the property was left in a complete mess, Wales Online reported.
Trading standards officers continued to investigate complaints linked to Kamlee Builders between 2018 and 2020 which led to charges being made against Slocombe.
In Crown Court on May 9, a judge sentenced Slocombe to five years and five months in prison for one count of participating in a fraudulent business.
The builder was also disqualified from being a company director for eight years and prohibited from engaging in the course of a business directly or indirectly in any conduct whatsoever involving building, roofing, maintenance or gardening work in the UK.
David Hopkins, cabinet member for corporate services and performance in Swansea Council, welcomed the sentence and said: “The details of this case show an extremely disturbing level of dishonesty and appalling treatment towards families in Swansea, many of them who are vulnerable.
“The families who got taken in by Mr Slocombe’s dishonest behaviour have all paid a huge price financially as well as suffering stress throughout their ordeals. They believed he was acting in their interests and would carry out work honestly.
"We now know this was not the case and the builder did all he could to extract huge amounts of money from these families dishonestly.
“Our Trading Standards and Legal Teams have done an excellent job in bringing this case to court and ensuring no other families will suffer at the hands of this rogue builder.
This is the second time Slocombe has been jailed for similar offences, having been sent down for more than three and a half years for similar activities in 2015.
Among his victims then were Sheri Hall, 24, and James Gardner, 32, who hired Slocombe to carry out minor work at their home in Aberbeeg, Blaenau Gwent.
Slocombe left them without a staircase or radiators and when the pair returned to the house they found their floorboards lying in the back garden.
They also had to negotiate a four-foot drop into rubble to get into the front door.
Sheri said in 2015: “Not living there at the time, it was hard to see what was going on.
“It looked like a lot of work had been done because he had ripped it to pieces.”
