Behind The Built Environment - Episode 16

David
In 2023, Andrew Blunsdon was charged with two counts of bribery as part of a major investigation, Operation Truman, into how contracts were awarded on E.ON energy projects between 2011 and 2015. The case against Andrew centred on favours provided to key figures at E.ON to win work. One charge involved paying for an air conditioning unit at the flower shop of Marc Baker, E.ON's Head of Projects.

The other involved payments to a subcontractor, Excavate, which were later found to have been redirected to a consultancy run by Matthew Hayward, an E.ON quantity surveyor. Andrew says that in 2011 he was not aware of the criminal conduct of the people who were working for E.ON. He says he was asked for help and agreed, acting under pressure from influential people.

And while he made serious errors in judgement, he never set out to commit a crime. He pleaded guilty in 2024 on legal advice, largely to avoid financial ruin. In 2025, he was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years, and ordered to do community service. But here's the other side of the story.

The wheels of justice move painfully slowly. The events in question began in 2011. He was first interviewed by police in 2016. Charges arrived in 2023 and sentencing happened in 2025. And it's still not over. A Proceeds of Crime hearing is scheduled for 2026. So while the legal system dragged on, Andrew's business collapsed.

His reputation took a major hit. He lost his pension, and his family has carried much of the emotional weight. This conversation isn't about re-running a trial. It's about understanding how a contractor with no criminal intent can end up in this position, and what the rest of us in the sector can learn from it.

If you've ever thought, just help a client out and ask questions later, this is the story you need to hear.

David
So, Andrew, welcome, and thank you again for doing this.

Andrew
Nice to be here, David.

David
So let's start with the central contradiction, shall we? Why did you agree to the guilty pleas? And how do you reconcile that with the claim that you never intended to commit bribery?

Andrew
It's a great question. My legal advice at the time was: this is ridiculous. This is nothing to answer here. We should challenge. But then the law was explained by my counsel, about the challenges between knowing what you're doing and not knowing what you're doing. There is no difference in the eyes of the Act.

Andrew
And if I was to sit in front of a jury of 12 members of the public, with the rest of the case, the other defendants, I would most likely be found guilty and then I would go to prison. So we decided to take control of the situation. The events did happen. I could have done better, I could have done more due diligence, I could have prevented it.

Andrew
Hindsight is great. So guilty really was the only plea that I should make. But it's a complicated, complicated answer.

David
I get that. And you were charged under the Bribery Act. Had you ever heard of the Bribery Act before you were charged?

Andrew
No. The Bribery Act 2010 came into force in the beginning of July, June, sorry, 2011, which is about the same sort of time that the E.ON contract that we were tendering for, we secured. So it all happened around very similar times. We had the policies in place as a business. We had to go through a six-month process to become a supply chain partner for E.ON.

Andrew
We put my business through ISO 9001, quality assurance, 14,000, all of the badges and bells and whistles to become a supply chain partner. So we had anti-corruption and bribery policies, health and safety, all the policies. But they weren't alive in the business. They weren't brought to life. They were pieces of paper. They were documents.

Andrew
They had no real meaning. It was: this is the right thing to do. Obviously you must have a policy about corruption and bribery. You must have. But it wasn't until later that it actually came to life when you understand the consequences.

David
I think you've said to me before that you were naive and very willing to please influential figures in E.ON. So what were you trying to achieve, and what did you gain out of all of it?

Andrew
Well, I gained personally nothing. I've lost everything really, when you consider it. But I personally gained nothing. But why? So we were a young business. Priddy Engineering was about two years old. And the opportunity to become a supply chain partner to an energy giant was just amazing. It was incredible, the due diligence we had to go through to become a supply chain partner.

Andrew
Six months just added to that excitement really, to be part of that journey. To work on the statutory side of a building as opposed to the muck and bullets of contracting. So we threw everything at it. And the people that you are dealing with, you don't expect. You just don't expect them to have a sinister motive.

Andrew
So when I was asked for help, I said yes. I'm not saying, like, jump how high, which is a common phrase people might use. But they asked for help and I said yes. My failing as a person is I am always too trusting. I wish I was tougher. I think my business would have been saved if I was a tougher individual. But I ain't built like that.

David
The life of a contractor is a tough one, is it not?

Andrew
It is, very.

David
I think we were discussing before that, you know, we both sat on HVCA Council together and you probably come out of that meeting, there were 10 missed calls and not one of them was to say, I think you're a lovely guy and I want to say what a great job you're doing. But there we go.

David
Bit more detail on this. So in 2011 and 2012, payments were made to Excavate and those were later discovered to have been funnelled to Hayward via his partner. What steps can a contractor take on that due diligence? What would you do differently now?

Andrew
Well, the irony here is that the six-month due process that E.ON put in place for us to become a supply chain partner, whilst extreme and a good thing, you must do your due diligence. So we did the standard supply chain questionnaires, checked their bona fides, their CIS status, my account statements and VAT returns, and they were a bona fide company, and still are, through that side of it as a subcontractor.

Andrew
The request for E.ON to place an order with a groundworks company, because it was going to take too long for them to get them put onto their SAP system, their supply chain system, tried to cut a few corners. To speak as if they were under pressure, this was the Bath project by Crest Nicholson to get houses up and running and online with power and that.

Andrew
I was at meetings and you just felt the pressure that E.ON were under to deliver power and energy, and the heat, to these dwellings. So, Andrew, can you help? Can you cut corners and cut this and that? And I said yes, I'll help. They place the order through my business.

Andrew
I paid Excavate. E.ON paid me, or my company. It just seemed normal. I had no idea that there was a sinister motive. It wasn't until the police interviewed me in 2016 that I knew that the individual that was working for this subcontractor was related to the quantity surveyor from E.ON.

Andrew
And it wasn't until later again in 2023, when the police provided the case evidence, the initial briefings, that I understood the depth and the size of the scale of the criminality that the individuals from E.ON were up to.

Andrew
And wow. I'm not sure I would ever have known that, because of the way that the information is. There's no way of me finding out.

Andrew
But as a business, first of all, you must build a relationship with your supply chain. You must have a relationship with them. You must check their quality of work. You must understand how they do things.

Andrew
You need to understand if they have the same values that you have as a business. That when you step onto a site, they are a reflection of you as a business. Not a completely separate entity that's acting in a different manner, in a different way. That's no good.

Andrew
You've got to have a supply chain that works to the same values that you do, and you've got to hold yourself in the highest regard, the highest terms.

Andrew
So your business needs to adhere to that at all levels. Finance, the pre-con, the estimating, the delivery. It needs to be a team conversation about a business, how they deal with supply chain, because it is a reflection of you as a business.

Andrew
And ultimately, if you do a great job on site, you'll get another job. If you deliver a bad project, you won't get another job. And that should be the reason for you to deliver projects. Not to cut corners, not to get somebody on the cheap, or do someone a favour. When you look back on it with hindsight, it's a ridiculous thing to do.

Andrew
And why would you? Later, I had an opportunity where the same question was asked of another major contractor, one of the tier ones. And they asked one of my quantity surveyors if we would place an order with a contractor because it would have taken too long to get them on their books. And it was a small piece of work.

Andrew
My quantity surveyor came to me and asked, because it was now in the business, it was now a conversation that everybody was aware of. I said, we will go and speak to them together, and I will tell them no, and I will tell them why. And from that, they chose not to work with us again. The consequence of saying no is tough, but it was the right decision at the time.

David
Just to recap on this. So basically, was it Hayward said, look, it's too difficult, Andrew, we're under pressure. We need someone to pull some trenches for us to get our cables in. It will take too long to put this company through the SAP process. So can you just place the order? Unbeknownst to you, the money you paid in good faith was siphoned off and paid back into the QS at E.ON.

Andrew
I can remember what happened. It was quite late on in 2011. I was on site, my project managers were doing it, I was helping get the project going, and we weren't starting. We didn't actually have a contract at this stage, and Hayward met me on site and said, I need you to include some builders' work within your tender.

Andrew
But it's groundworks. There were 14 trenches through to dwellings that needed to be built. The main contractor of the site hadn't got the facilities to do it. Our main groundworks isn't happening now for a few months. We've got a company in Exeter that will come up and do it. Can you place the order for us, get that work done?

Andrew
So we weren't even on site at that time. It was happening before they handed me a quotation from Excavate. We then went to Excavate and did the due diligence on them, being a supply chain, with the questionnaires, etc. E.ON managed the works. Hayward said that the works were complete and that we should include it with our application.

Andrew
I was told that because we're under 14-day payment terms with E.ON, I wasn't to muck about with the payment of a subcontractor and to adhere to the payment terms, otherwise that would be frowned upon. I received an NEC form of contract with the works included in the NEC form of contract.

Andrew
So if I hadn't done it, I'd have been in breach of the contract, signed off by Hayward's boss, unbeknown to him, I guess, what was going on. Yeah. And the works were done. E.ON paid us, we paid the contractor.

David
And it was a relative's company, in effect.

Andrew
So Hayward, it turns out, used to work for Excavate, and his wife used her maiden name, Jackson, to write on the invoices.

David
Interestingly, we've had to do some anti-money laundering exercises through Wellplan on companies who use the system. And actually it's surprising who the owners of companies are. Not always the people you expect them to be. So, yeah, it's very difficult. But due diligence is clearly really, really important.

David
So during this process, and in 2011 and 2012, you had a serious bike accident in Spain and you nearly died, and you had two periods in intensive care. How did that impact your ability to make decisions around this time?

Andrew
Yes, well, that was a very, very tough time. So at the time we were starting on site in Bath for the first project, I went on holiday with some friends and I came off my bike. Very distressing for my family. They all came out to see me.

Andrew
I was in intensive care, was in Spain for three weeks, and came home. And then I went back to work because I felt I had to go back to work, after a week or two, against my family's advice, going backwards and forwards on the train, and they wouldn't let me drive.

Andrew
And then I felt great and I said I was going to be good. And then I can remember standing at my desk and then my spleen ruptured again. I ended up in hospital again. This time I was off until January. During that period the business was run by one of my non-executive directors.

Andrew
I put in place a stronger board after a management buyout, and one of the other directors stepped in. But it wasn't me. And it was lots of phone calls at home: what do we do here, what do you do there? The second tender came through as well for this Bath Riverside project.

Andrew
I should have been able to hand the reins over to somebody else and stand away from decision-making, in hindsight, because I wasn't very well. My head was all over the place and I think my family would probably tell me it was about a year before I was back to normal. So the whole of 2012 I was not right.

Andrew
So when you look back now, if you're a business and you have something like this, an event that happens, you've got to put some kind of processes in place to either safeguard your decision-making, because it's done as a team and you collectively make the decisions, or you put somebody else in place to do it for you and get better.

Andrew
So that 2012 year was tough, but I did get better. You feel like you've left everybody down when you've had that kind of event in your life, so you want to get back to normal: everything's fine, everything's fine. But it wasn't.

Andrew
I can remember in January, February time I held the Apprentice of the Year awards straight after my first week coming back from work in Bristol.

Andrew
And Beezer was there, the chief exec was there, and the apprentices were there. And I was on stage talking, and every apprentice that came up kept welling up about how proud I was of them. Oh, I'm very proud of them. But it was me. I was just not very well, but I did it.

Andrew
And it's ridiculous the things you would do to try and show that everything's fine here.

Andrew
But if you have an event like that, you must put the due diligence in. You must have safeguards. You must have people around you who you can delegate to. And if you don't do decision-making collectively as a team, get a high-functioning team within your business with loads of trust, and you can speak honestly and openly with each other, because you shouldn't be making decisions on your own. Definitely not.

David
But you want to be like a superman when you run a business, don't you? And show that you're indestructible. I quite understand that. We were talking about the Bribery Act and training for that, and you actually brought some training into your company. But after that initial police inquiry, when you became aware of the Act, I guess in reality, what earlier steps would you have taken? And what do you think other companies should do to ensure they've got a compliant company?

Andrew
The key thing is to take your quality systems seriously. They're documents that are really, really important, and you never know how important they are until something happens to you. Health and safety is quite easy to understand when there's an accident and that, and you have to do the certain steps there as a business, and each of the people have responsibility.

Andrew
But anti-corruption and bribery at the time was really new. But you still should know the difference between right and wrong. And you should have a culture within a business that is able to differentiate those things. And most companies do, to be honest. It's when something goes wrong, and being aware of what can happen, because the Act is very powerful and it does cover knowingly or unknowingly.

Andrew
So training early, and just talking about it, and bringing that policy to life within the business is really important. The early steps are making it part of your culture, like everything else.

Andrew
I went above and beyond in 2016 where I took my board of directors and some senior managers to a solicitor's practice and they did a one-to-one training on the board for a day on the Act, and then I made it a mandatory part of induction for all new employees.

Andrew
Yeah. It was regularly reviewed every 12 months, where people had to renew their refresher training. And I think most larger companies do these as a suite of training that a new employee and existing employee should do regularly, like asbestos awareness. We are really, really good at being vigilant to that.

Andrew
But anti-corruption and bribery, and these other types of policies and other things that can happen to you as a business, need to be equally as important. Yes. Until something happens though, it really does come to life. But in 2016, you know, I was in charge, I was helping the police with information. I had no idea what would happen later.

David
No. So I actually wanted to go on to that because it seems to the layman a staggeringly long period of time between 2011 and then 2016. So tell me, how did this sort of unfold for you in 2016? You got a letter? A call? What happened?

Andrew
I had a letter inviting me to Exeter police station to be interviewed under caution, which I didn't know what that meant. But to my parents, my dad was a police officer. One of my best friends is a police officer. And they said, this is serious, Andrew. You need to go with a solicitor.

Andrew
You need to speak to a solicitor because you have no idea what they're going to be asking you. I said, well, I don't understand. I said, I'll just go down there and talk to them. I've got nothing to hide.

Andrew
So anyway, I did the right thing. I contacted the solicitors and they went down. But they then spoke to the police and the police give you a pre-interview questionnaire, which we went through. Very simple. Did I know Matthew Hayward? Did I know Marc Baker? Was I aware of E.ON? Blah blah blah.

Andrew
And then you sit down in the police interview room and they ask you questions. Because you're not allowed to incriminate yourself, you're not allowed to say things which are going to, which are wrong. So "no comment" is not very comfortable when somebody asks a question, because you don't really know what the question's leading to, because you have no idea.

Andrew
So the situation was explained to me about Hayward, and they'd had bank account records from my business that said we'd made a payment to Hayward's wife, not to Excavate. They showed the invoices that had been signed off, that had gone through our financial process within the business, signed off by me because it was a job.

Andrew
At the time, all of our engineers and project managers signed off their own invoices to check that they were correct and payments were made. But the bank account details had been changed on the invoice, and the finance department of my company paid it to the bank details, which was wrong, obviously, because that wasn't the same as the supply chain questionnaire bank details. So there was a failing there, but that would have caught it.

Andrew
But I didn't know anything about this person from Excavate until the police showed me. And I certainly didn't know that Hayward, that was his wife, and I certainly didn't know that either of them worked for that company. So a bit of a shock.

Andrew
And then, right through then to two, three years afterwards, my solicitor kept going back to the police and asking them. Twenty-eight minutes I was with the police. That's the only time I've ever spoken to the police. This was 28 minutes.

Andrew
I provided them a lot more information as well. Helped them with invoices and stuff to help them fill in the gaps of the questions. Gave them everything they wanted. Twenty-eight minutes, and then 2023.

David
But that's seven years later.

Andrew
Seven years later. My solicitor had contacted the police every month for the first three years. "No, nothing. Nothing. Nothing." And I was told: just get on with my life.

David
By your solicitor?

Andrew
Yeah, just go. This was before COVID.

David
So how did they contact you in 2023?

Andrew
So I had a letter in the post, came home from work, letter in the post from Exeter. I thought I'd been to Exeter, but it was a type of letter you get, like driven through a bus lane, or you had a parking ticket. A letter like that. And not until you read it.

Andrew
It was summoning me to the Magistrates' Court. And I'd been charged with two counts of bribery. One for Matthew Hayward, where I'd paid him £8,000 and £36,000, including the VAT. And the police said I'd done that to receive work.

Andrew
And the second one was for Marc Baker, who was the Head of Projects at E.ON, where he had an air conditioning unit which he didn't pay for, and I'd given that to him for free. The reason I did that was to obtain work for me. That was what the charges were.

Andrew
In 2023, I went to the Magistrates' Court and didn't open my mouth, wasn't asked to say anything. The whole case was referred to Crown Court. I had to pay for the legal fees for that. Went to Crown Court.

Andrew
All the other defendants, because Operation Truman was seven defendants. The main protagonist obviously didn't turn up. I was sat in court with my barrister. Didn't open my mouth. Wasn't asked to place a plea.

Andrew
The cost of the barrister for that day, and the leading up to it. There was another mention hearing where we went to court again. I didn't go to that one. My barrister went on his own. They didn't turn up to that either.

Andrew
Then it was deferred. Deferred. Delayed. Cancelled. And eventually got moved from Exeter to Winchester Crown Court. The judge was getting a little bit annoyed by this time with the shenanigans going on with the other defendants.

Andrew
And then he said, you will be going on this date, and you will be making a plea in 2024.

Andrew
So we went to Winchester Crown Court, stood in the dock with the other seven defendants and they all went, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. And it came to me and I went guilty.

Andrew
And the judge looked to me, and said to my barrister, I don't think there's any need for Mr Blunsdon to be here today. I think he should leave. And thank you very much, Mr Blunsdon. You can leave. We'll see you next year. Have a nice summer.

Andrew
And I looked at the rest of the defendants in the dock and I left, went into Winchester and thought, what was that all about?

Andrew
And then they were all going to go to trial, where they all changed their plea just before going into the trial and pleaded guilty. That was January of this year. And then sentencing end of April, May.

Andrew
The cost, financial cost, for me to plead guilty at my very first opportunity has been tens of thousands. I mean, I'm up to £85,000 just in legal fees, just to pay for my own defence, to plead guilty at the first opportunity, because of the delays. And then the Proceeds of Crime Act, which is going on and on. That won't happen now until 2026.

David
Can you tell me a bit more about the Proceeds of Crime Act? So what is that? I mean, you've been found guilty, you've been sentenced. What's the Proceeds of Crime Act?

Andrew
The Proceeds of Crime Act, as far as I'm aware, was brought into place following the Brink's-Mat robbery, which enabled the government to obtain the illicit.

David
So, from the profit you made on this.

Andrew
Yeah. So if one pound of a criminality thing is found to be done illegally, then you can pay the entire amount of the thing.

David
Okay.

Andrew
So I've had to provide all of my financial statements, all of my bank accounts, the value of my house and everything. And then the Crown Prosecution, forensic accountants, they look at that and then they put a proposal to the courts of what they believe is the amount of money that I should pay back. How much I have, in their eyes, gained from the criminality, which was zero, personally.

Andrew
That figure has been set, but it is yet to be decided by the judge, which will happen later. So it's just a process you have to go through.

David
And that's in 2026. That will happen. You also did community service. Have you done that? Or is that...

Andrew
Yes, I did that, yeah.

David
What does that involve?

Andrew
Helping clean the cycle paths and cutting edges back. It's an interesting experience. One of the ways of me to deal with this was to talk about it and to embrace it. Crack on, head down, and get on with it. And that behaviour enabled me to just get through that.

Andrew
But to be honest with you, the people were fantastic. They were lovely people, very kind. Didn't know why I was there, which is quite funny. Not very funny at the time, but it's over. And it just, you know, part of my life. I just put it down to experience.

Andrew
Stephen Merchant hasn't rung me for any more ideas for his next series, but it was interesting. Yeah, it was 150 hours. But it went through pretty quickly, I got to admit. I just embraced it and did it.

David
I can only imagine though, but sort of, since 2016, sleepless nights, constant worry. What's the next letter going to bring? What's the next call going to bring?

Andrew
When that letter arrived in 2023, my world fell apart. The anxiety in my chest, the tightness, and it hasn't gone away. It's permanent. It hasn't gone away. Now, to do this today has been really important for me, but the anxiety is horrendous.

Andrew
I can only describe it best: if you ask your father if you can borrow his car and he says no. Then he goes to work, but you borrow it anyway and then you write it off and then you've got to tell him. That feeling, waiting for him to come home, that feeling in your chest, that anxiety, that tightness. It's like that all the time. Permanent.

Andrew
What will people think of me? Where's my... I'm a good person. I still believe I'm a good person that's done something bad, I guess. I take full responsibility for it. You could drag a lot of people into it, but no. I took responsibility for what happened, which is right.

Andrew
I accepted what happened to me pretty quickly once it was explained, the law to me. Could have done better, should have done better, should have been stronger as a person. But all of those things play on your mind, as you know. They just eat away at you and you try to function. Still go to work, still try to pay the bills, still pay the mortgage, still have a family, then be cheery, and all this is happening. It's difficult.

David
So if you put yourself back in your old shoes, what advice would you give to Andrew back in 2011? How would you do things differently than you did?

Andrew
Well, the Andrew Blunsdon today is completely different to the Andrew Blunsdon in 2011. I would say no. Just say no. This doesn't smell right, doesn't sound right, can't be right. No.

Andrew
Explain more. Why? Why can't you do this? Why have you not got yourself into a position where you can sort out your own affairs, E.ON? Why have you come to a subcontractor? Just say no. Be stronger, be tougher, and not be worried about losing the work as a consequence. Stick to your own values.

Andrew
I can remember years and years ago a really, really great business development guy, who has passed away, called Doug Pembery. I remember Doug very well.

David
Yeah.

Andrew
He said to me, Andrew, be an honest trader.

David
Good advice. So, Tina, thank you very much for joining us. For just one last question. Andrew very powerfully spoke about the impact on your family. Could you describe to us what the past, what's since 2016, has been like for you and the family?

Tina
When originally Andrew, as he said, got that letter just to go down and help the police, we didn't really think that much of it because we didn't think he'd done anything wrong. So the first sort of three years, it was just checking in what's going on.

Tina
And the moment we were told to get on with our lives, we did. And then obviously we lost Priddy, and we were dealing with that, and we just...

Tina
I can remember we sat down and we started planning for our future. Things like, we can recoup money. We were young enough then to think about what we could do with our lives and how we can regain some of our own money back from dealing with all Priddy. And we thought things are starting to look good now, didn't we?

Tina
And then when that letter came, it just destroyed our lives. We were in the kitchen when you opened it, weren't we? I mean, we just couldn't believe what we were reading.

Tina
So then everything was horrendous. It's been emotionally trying to support Andrew through it all. The thought of what people are going to say, because I work in the construction industry supporting other companies as well, wondering what they're going to think of us as a couple, not just Andrew. About the children, how they're facing this.

Tina
And as we were going through the process of the last couple of years, the barrister wanted me at everything. So I had to go to all the meetings, all the accusations, reading all this information about Andrew that wasn't right, it wasn't what happened, it wasn't the process.

Tina
We understood the financial side is really hard, taking all our money away. Even I had to get my own barrister team to defend myself, because of the property and any pension. So we had to have my own legal team, which cost an awful lot of money. And then at the end of it, it wasn't needed because I was mentioned anyway. So we had to go through that just in case of losing absolutely everything, the house.

Tina
I always said that if we lost the pension, we could deal with it in the future. If you lost my house, I don't know how I would have come back from that.

Tina
At one point, it was so bad I wanted Andrew to leave because I couldn't stand looking at him. I couldn't cope with the pressure. Facing the children, telling the kids what happened was the hardest. And telling your parents what we're going through. It was awful.

Tina
Our children had to help and they made choices. Our son decided he and his partner were going to leave where they were renting to come live with me in case Andrew went to prison. Because we were told to prepare for the worst, that you've got to prepare for him going in.

Tina
So we had to deal with all that and make plans for him not being with us. Emotionally it's been horrendous. Physically as well. Mental health. Andrew was even talking about suicide at one point, because he said if I went in, I wouldn't come out. And wondering what was going to happen to him.

Tina
All through the build-up to the trials and then after, when it all came out in the press, wondering what people were going to say, because what they were saying wasn't true. And he was branded this villain in the press. Our local press was awful.

Tina
And then you have people saying to you... Because I never really spoke about it. Even my family don't really know about this. So for me to come here today, it's been massive.

Tina
But I think it's a story that men need to hear about what they can do to their partners and their families. Because their decisions to be helpful has cost us dearly, the whole family, and the press. And, you know, people have been supportive, especially for Andrew, and he's had a really good team around him who I've even rung because I was so worried about him, who supported him. But it's the press that really did it.

David
They get a partial story, don't they? And they run on that.

Tina
Yeah.

David
Is there a brighter side to this now? It's nearly over. What are you going to do now? Where are you going from here?

Tina
I don't know. We've still got the Proceeds of Crime to deal with. That's going to take every penny that we have left financially. The future, we don't know how we're going to survive because we will have to sell the house and we'll probably have to go into renting and live off the money that we have left.

Tina
Because we're too old to build up another pension pot. We can't put any money in the pension because we've had to take all of it out to pay for the legal fees and all the fines, all the money that they're saying.

Tina
And the money... They accused us in the beginning it was over a million and it's come down to under a million. But we never done any of that.

David
No.

Andrew
You've got to put one foot in front of the other. Still love the industry. Still got my health. Still got health.

David
You got each other.

Andrew
We got each other. I'm very, very lucky, that's for sure. Not sure many couples would have survived what we've been through, or what I've put them through.

Andrew
Yeah. You've got to focus on the positive. It is nearly over. The lesson is that others need to learn from this. If they can learn and not go through what we've been through, just through thinking you're doing the right thing at the time... you just never know what's going to happen.

Andrew
So it's really important to consider what can happen to you because it is devastating. Not just for you. It's like dropping a pebble in a lake. Those ripples go far and wide. You have no idea who they will touch and who they will affect.

David
If one person looks at this and does something different than they would have done, then thank you very much for giving us your time today. It's the bravest thing I've seen, so thank you very much for your time. Tina, Andrew, thank you.

Andrew
Thank you.

David
Andrew and Tina's story is a tough one, not just because of the legal outcome, but because of how easily something that starts with a favour or a shortcut can spiral into years of damage.

David
We talk a lot in this industry about risk: technical risk, commercial risk, reputational risk. But the human risk of just going along with what a client asks, without checking, without challenging, without protecting yourself, that's something we still don't really talk about enough.

David
His case shows how quickly trust can be exploited, how slowly justice can move, and how devastating the fallout can be, not just for individuals, but for their families and businesses. So if you are listening and thinking, this could never happen to me, stop and think again.

David
If you haven't put in place checks, training, and have the confidence to say no when something feels wrong, you're exposed. My thanks to Andrew and to Tina for sharing not just facts, but the fallout.

David
That's it for this episode of Behind the Built Environment. If you found this conversation valuable, share it. Let's make sure others don't have to learn the hard way.

David
Until next time, I'm David Frise. Thanks for listening.