A ROGUE trader who preyed on the elderly has been fined £22,000 in the first case of its kind in Oxfordshire.

William Connors, who lives in a caravan at Gypsy Lane, Greenacres, Slapton Road, Leighton Buzzard, was fined £18,000 by Oxford Magistrates’ Court after Oxfordshire Trading Standards successfully charged him with being engaged in aggressive commercial practice.

No defendant has ever been accused of the crime before in Oxfordshire.

Connors admitted using aggressive sales tactics to make a 74-year-old woman agree to have her driveway resurfaced by his four employees and was sentenced in his absence by magistrates.

The crime carries a maximum fine of £20,000.

The 32-year-old was also fined a further £4,000 after he admitted failing to give the elderly woman the option to cancel her contract.

Martin Woodley, leader of Oxfordshire Trading Standards’ doorstep crime team, said: “This is the first time that we have used the offence of an aggressive practice under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations in addition to the Cancellation of Contracts in a Consumer’s Home and Place of Work Regulations.

“It was the right thing to do in this case. If we can show evidence of aggressive practice we will definitely use it again.”

The regulations against aggressive practice have been available to Trading Standards and police since 2008, but up until now similar cases in Oxfordshire have been prosecuted using other offences such as carrying out work contrary to professional diligence, misleading actions or fraud by false representation, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment.

Mr Woodley added: “These traders deliberately target elderly and vulnerable people as they are often too polite to tell them to go away.”

But Connors was caught short by his victim’s quick-thinking nephew, who called in Trading Standards while Connors and his men were still at work on her drive.

Yesterday his victim told of her delight that “a bully has got his comeuppance”.

The pensioner said: “I put the phone down after I got the news and started shouting ‘Bingo!’ – I just couldn’t believe the court result.”

When Connors approached her on January 10 at her home in Thame it wasn’t the first time the pair had met. He had previously carried out work on her drive and drains 10 years earlier, leaving a mess behind him.

This time she said she was not interested in his offer to resurface her drive and asked him to leave, but Connors returned the following day and pressured her into having the work done.

“He wasn’t very charming at all. He was very, very persuasive – almost aggressively persuasive,” she said.

The quotes kept rising, she said, as Connor’s team started widening her drive, until she panicked and called in her nephew. The victim had to pay a legitimate company £436 to make good the work.