Company owner banned from being director after failing to pay ICO fine

The Insolvency Service has announced that a director of a home improvements company has been disqualified from holding a directorship for eight years.

Carl Tingley was the sole director of Home2Sense Limited, which the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) issued a £200,000 monetary penalty in 2022 after it made 675,478 unsolicited marketing calls to individuals registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) to promote loft insulation. During these calls, staff used pseudonyms or failed to identify their actual organisation. An Insolvency Service investigation further revealed that Tingley purchased the dataset from an individual known as "Chris" for £500. 

The High Court imposed the eight-year disqualification, describing the company's management as lamentable. The ban follows the company's entry into compulsory liquidation in 2022, with £200,000 in liabilities, after it failed to pay the ICO fine. 

In a statement, Andy Curry, Head of Investigations at the ICO said: "Home2Sense Limited made hundreds of thousands of nuisance marketing calls to people who had specifically registered to avoid them, using a list of numbers bought from an unknown source with no regard for whether this was lawful. 

"Our Financial Investigation Unit works closely with the Insolvency Service to bring companies and directors to account, particularly where they fail to pay fines imposed for unlawful nuisance marketing. By disrupting the non-compliant activities of directors such as Carl Tingley, we can help ensure they can’t easily resurface under a different name and continue to cause further harm to people."

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