TWO moonlighting workmen who set fire to a house to cover up their lack of progress on a contract job have been locked up for three years.

Kevin McGill and Derek Stevenson were worried that their boss was due to visit the property and would see they had been working elsewhere.

A court heard yesterday that the arson attack could have put at risk the life of a mother-of-three and her daughter who were in the house next door.

The neighbour fled from the terraced property with the eight-year-old girl after being alerted to smoke coming from the property under renovation.

McGill and Stevenson left the scene in their van, but were seen by witnesses driving past the burning house to see how badly they had damaged it.

They almost collided with a fire engine racing to the blaze in Hallington Head, Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, on November 17, 2008.

Teesside Crown Court heard how the bungling pair were arrested the following day when they returned to the house and found police there.

The men, from Hartlepool, were convicted of arson being reckless as to whether life was endangered after a week-long trial last December.

The court heard that plasterer and father-of-two McGill, 25, and joiner Stevenson, 42, both still deny being responsible for the blaze.

After his arrest, McGill made a full confession to the police, saying he and Stevenson had been moonlighting and not doing the repair work.

He said he panicked when he realised they house was to be inspected in a day or two, and after vandals had broken in and left it in a mess.

McGill told police in interviews he squirted petrol around the rooms and shoved a burning rag through a letter box.

He later said he lied in his interviews, while Stevenson told detectives that he was not aware a fire had been started until McGill got into his van.

Joseph Spencer, for former Navy seaman McGill, of Lancaster Road, said: “It is clear he will miss his family and that they will miss him.”

Mr Spencer told the court McGill comes from a supportive family, and has worked as a volunteer for a Barnado’s project in Hartlepool.

Robin Denny said his client, Stevenson, of Barra Grove, has had “a solid marriage over many years” and a good history of working.

“It is very difficult to understand how, after many years of good character, he came to be involved in this way. It was a madcap scheme.”