The boss of a home improvements firm which made more than 600,000 calls to people who had signed up to the TPS and then failed to pay a £200,000 fine, has been slapped with an eight-year company director ban.
Lampeter-based Home2Sense, which was branded “lamentable” by a High Court judge, made 675,478 calls to numbers listed on the TPS between June 2020 and March 2021. Some staff had used false names, others had failed to identify where they were actually calling from; they even targeted people who had died.
The Information Commissioner’s Office fined the company £200,000 in 2022 for the calls trying to sell loft insulation, but the fine was never paid and the company went into compulsory liquidation.
Following an investigation by the Insolvency Service, the company’s sole director, Carl Tingley, 39, who is now of Benning Avenue, Dunstable, has been disqualified is from acting as a company director or being involved in the management, promotion, or formation of a company until 2034.
Insolvency Service chief investigator Neil North said: “Carl Tingley failed to ensure that Home2Sense complied with regulations to protect members of the public from nuisance calls.
“As a result of deliberately undertaking such an extensive cold calling campaign, the company received a large fine which went unpaid and led to the failure of Home2Sense.
“Tingley’s actions caused distress to members of the public and ultimately caused his company to fail as a result, so it is right that he should be banned from controlling any more companies for the next eight years.”
ICO head of investigations Andy Curry added: “We welcome the decision to disqualify Carl Tingley as a company director.
“Home2Sense made hundreds of thousands of nuisance marketing calls to people who had specifically registered to avoid them, using a list of numbers bought from an unknown source with no regard for whether this was lawful.
“Our Financial Investigation Unit works closely with the Insolvency Service to bring companies and directors to account, particularly where they fail to pay fines imposed for unlawful nuisance marketing. By disrupting the non-compliant activities of directors such as Carl Tingley, we can help ensure they can’t easily resurface under a different name and continue to cause further harm to people.”
Home2Sense was set up in 2019 and entered compulsory liquidation in 2022 with liabilities of £200,000.
The company initially claimed the number of inappropriate calls it made was “relatively low” and had either been made by staff who were training or who had since been dismissed.
But investigations by the Insolvency Service show the company was using a list of numbers which Tingley had bought from a man known only as ‘Chris’ for £500.
In interviews with Insolvency Service investigators, Tingley claimed he did not know his company should not call the blocked numbers and said he thought the list he bought from ‘Chris’ was ‘good’.
One complainant said: “Asked to speak to Mrs X who happens to be my late mother who passed away over 10 years ago as the loft insulation needs to be surveyed as it may cause problems. They called 3 times. This was distressing as they were asking to speak to my late mother. Surely being on the TPS register should stop these calls and they need to be prosecuted.”
But when his case was heard at the High Court in London, the judge agreed to ban Tingley for eight years, saying the way the company had been run was lamentable.
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