A weekly newspaper has been censured over its report of a trading standards case involving a ‘rogue builder’ who left a house ‘uninhabitable.’

The Glamorgan Gazette reported on a court case involving builder Drew Joyce and two sets of customers he had carried out work for in a story headlined ‘Householders left with ‘mess and disarray’ by builder.’

The report, published on 5th October last year, described Mr Joyce as a “rogue builder” who “carried out shoddy work after pocketing more than £30,000 in cash from his victims”.

It stated that when the complainant was “questioned about his work by the victims, he claimed he had underpriced the jobs and walked, leaving one of the houses uninhabitable.”

The newspaper reported that both victims had reported the matter to trading standards officials at Bridgend council and that legal proceedings against Mr Joyce had followed.

However the Gazette inaccurately reported that Mr Joyce had been “arrested” and also inaccurately listed the charges to which he had later pleaded guilty, in breach of Clause 1 of the Editor’s Code.

The Gazette accepted it was not accurate to report the complainant had been arrested, although it did not initially accept this inaccuracy was significant given Mr Joyce was ultimately convicted in relation to the offence for which he had been questioned.

However it offered to add a footnote correction to the online verson of the story clarifying that Mr Joyce had not been arrested.

The Gazette also did not initially accept it had inaccurately reported the charges against the complainant, citing an emailed court list which listed the charges as ‘Dishonestly make false representation to make gain for self/another or cause loss to other/expose other to risk x2,’ ‘Aid/abet dishonest failure to disclose information to make a gain for self/ another / cause / expose other to a loss x2′ and ‘Engage in commercial practice which is a misleading action containing false information x2.’

However he had in fact pleaded guilty to two counts of engaging in unfair commercial practice and one count of fraud, as was later confirmed by Cardiff Crown Court.

The Gazette then amended the online article to remove the incorrect charges and publish a further correction.

On the same day, it also offered to publish a print correction which appeared in its corrections and clarifications column on page 2.

In its ruling, IPSO’s Code Committee ruled that the Gazette had not taken care not to publish inaccurate or misleading information both on the matter of Mr Joyce’s arrest, and the inaccurate reporting of the charges against him, and that the inaccuracies were sufficiently serious to justify corrections.

However it accepted that both the print and online corrections had been offered sufficiently promptly.

A number of other complaints by Mr Joyce under Clause 1 (Accuracy) and Clause 2 (Privacy) were rejected.

The complaint was partially upheld, and the full adjudication can be read here.