Builder disappears with large deposit, later discovered he was recently bankrupted

[Jasper1965]

A friend of mine recently employed a builder to build an extension for him.

 

Friend gave the builder £5,000 advance to cover materials and some labour costs etc.

A week later builder asked him for £2,500 to pay for the double glazing, friend wrote a cheque out to the third party whose name was supplied by the builder.

After another week builder then took a further £800 cash advance for materials.

 

Can you guess whats coming?

 

Builder hasn't been on job for five weeks now, doesn't answer phone only occasional texts in which he has admitted receipt of all monies and just blags for more time for a variety of reasons.

 

Some demolition work has occured which has resulted in the friends c.h. boiler now being exposed on an exterior wall, the garden looks like Berlin 1945 with all the mini digger tracks and earth piles and approx £500 of bricks, blocks and sand have materialised. No sign of double glazing and tbh the person cheque was made out to doesn't seem involved with double glazing anyway.

 

I've made some prelim checks on the builder since my friend told me what had happened and have discovered that he was bankrupted in November of this year, just before he took the first of the payments.

 

He's a sole trader and was bankriupted in the name Joe Bloggs t/a "Some development company UK" and has taken the money as a sole trader without the company name.

 

I'm not at all sure about insolvencies so wonder if anyone could help by answering some of the following questions please?

 

1) Was the builder acting lawfully by failing to declare his very recent bankruptcy?

2) As the money was advanced after the bankruptcy was finalised am I correct in assuming that it is not part of any bankruptcy arrangement nor should it ever become a part of any arrangement?

3) His formal notice to "sort it out" expires on the 31st Dec to date it has been ignored insofar as no work has been done and no further materials have well materialised and no offer to repay part or all of any deposit has been made.

4) Surprise surprise the shyster lives in a very large very expensive country home which is currently up for sale. In the worst case scenario is it worth my friend rushing him into Court in the hope there's enough equity in the property? What I really mean here is if the house is forced sale because of bankruptcy, can a creditor who is not a party to that bankruptcy still apply for a charging order or does this affect the rights of the original creditors?

5) Should the OR be made aware of any of this behaviour even if it's because the guy is blatantly running up huge debts outside those covered by his bankruptcy?