- Callum Jones was the director of a company which harassed people with nuisance cold-calls in 2019 and 2020
- Colourcoat Ltd, based on the south coast, made almost a million calls trying to sell home improvements within an eight-month period
- Jones has now been disqualified as a company director following investigations by the Insolvency Service
The boss of a home improvement company which made more than 900,000 cold-calls has been banned as a director for four years.
Callum Jones was the sole director of Sussex-based Colourcoat Ltd, which specialised in roof cleaning, wall coating and insulation services.
Colourcoat made 969,273 unsolicited marketing calls which connected between August 2019 and April 2020, with almost half to people who had opted out of receiving such calls.
The company also used false names and made repeated calls which were described by some customers as being aggressive and abusive.
Colourcoat was fined £130,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in 2021 but went into liquidation without paying the fine in full.
Jones, 39, of Oban Road, St Leonards-on-Sea, has now been disqualified as a company director following investigations by the Insolvency Service.
Victoria Edgar, Chief Investigator at the Insolvency Service, said:
Callum Jones allowed his company to plague households over an eight-month period, making hundreds of thousands of nuisance cold-calls.
Businesses employing such unscrupulous tactics can expect enforcement action to be taken against them and Jones’s director ban now means he cannot run or manage any company for the next four years.
A total of 452,811 of the nuisance calls were made to people who had opted out of receiving such calls by registering with the Telephone Preference Service.
Colourcoat also used various fake company names including “Homes Advice Bureau”, “EcoSolve UK” and “Citizens Advice”.
Twenty-four complaints about the company were made to the Telephone Preference Service with a further 10 directly to the ICO.
Andy Curry, Director of Enforcement and Investigations at the ICO, said:
We welcome the decision to disqualify Callum Jones as the director of Colourcoat Ltd.
Nobody should be made to feel uncomfortable after simply answering the phone, and our investigation found that this company had no regard for the law, or the people they were illegally calling.
Our Financial Recovery Unit works closely with the Insolvency Service to bring companies and directors to account. By disrupting the non-compliant activities of directors such as Callum Jones, we can help ensure they can’t easily resurface under a different name and continue to cause further harm to people.
The ICO issued an enforcement notice to Colourcoat in June 2021 for breaching regulations 21 and 24 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 relating to the use of calls for direct marketing purposes.
Colourcoat went into liquidation in June 2023, having only paid just more than £74,000 of its £130,000 fine.
The Secretary of State for Business and Trade accepted a disqualification undertaking from Jones, and his ban started on Monday 3 February.
The undertaking prevents him from being involved in the promotion, formation or management of a company, without the permission of the court.
