A ROGUE roofer who carried out shoddy and unnecessary work sobbed after he was jailed for a year by a judge for preying on a vulnerable elderly couple.

Anthony Chapman cold-called the husband and wife at their home in Hartlepool and persuaded them that repairs were required to their chimney stack.

Chapman, who gave the elderly householders a false name, also offered to carry out re-pointing work and said he would replace loose tiles and clean out guttering.

Teesside Crown Court heard that the husband agreed to pay £45 for the work, but within a few hours the price had rocketed to a thousand pounds after the 26-year-old defendant said their home was in a worse condition than he first thought.

Richard Bennett, prosecuting, said the victims paid the thousand pounds, only to discover later that the property had been left in a mess with pieces of mortar left all over a driveway.

After contacting Trading Standards a chartered surveyor carried out his own assessment of the house.

Mr Bennett said: “He discovered the totally shoddy work that had been undertaken by the defendant.”

The barrister said Chapman lied about completing jobs he had promised and had been paid for “non-existent work”.

He added: “What work had been done was sub-standard and would require the householder to carry out further remedial repairs.”

Chapman, of Annandale Crescent, Hartlepool, pleaded guilty to four offences relating to consumer protection from unfair trading regulations.

The court heard how he had also breached a previous suspended sentence of 12 months jail, suspended for 18 months, for an unrelated offence of wounding.

Andrew Teate, mitigating, said Chapman continued to run a roofing company and had “no further complaints about the standard of [his] work”.

Mr Teate said he had been responsible for other employees who had worked on the job, but failed to check the work they had done.

Judge Michael Taylor told Chapman: “You are a rogue trader. This really is an appalling state of affairs.

“People like you prey upon the elderly.”

The judge said he could have given Chapman a community-based penalty, but said he had declined to do unpaid work in the past.

He jailed him for six months for the current offences and a further six months after he activated the previous suspended sentence.