Name game costs rogue trader £4,000

A GAS repairman who used so-called “phoenix companies” to continue trading after his firm went bust, ran up tens of thousands of pounds debt.

Nigel Anthony Baxter (44) of Greenhill Cottages, Mossley, has been disqualified as a director for three years and ordered to complete 200 hours community service. He was also told to pay £4,000 prosecution costs by Tameside Magistrates’ Court.

Baxter’s Stalybridge-based firm Baxters Gas Service Engineers Ltd went into liquidation in March, 2005, leaving unpaid debts of more than £42,000.

But just three weeks earlier he had set up the similarly-named Baxters Gas UK Ltd, also in Stalybridge, and continued trading. This firm was wound up in December, 2006, with £24,000 of debt.

Despite repeated warnings that he was breaking the law by using similar trading names as his defunct first company, he set up a second phoenix company — Baxters Gas Ltd — in 2006. This was dissolved in January last year.

He was sentenced last month and Ian Lucas from the Department for Business, which brought the prosecution, said: “We are determined to crack down on rogue traders who flout the law and cheat honest businesses.”