A former apprenticeship training provider boss has avoided a second director disqualification after arguing almost £1 million in erroneous funding claims were submitted without his knowledge.
Carl Roderick, who was banned and jailed in 2012 due to fraudulent mobile phone insurance trading, faced another case brought by the Insolvency Service after Insight Development and Consultancy, which traded as Levytate or Levytate Skills, went bust in October 2019.
In a High Court ruling last month, a judge dismissed the Insolvency Service’s bid to disqualify Roderick, who was the former managing director and co-owner of the apprenticeship provider.
The Insolvency Service, backed by the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), alleged Roderick was “unfit” to direct a company after Levytate submitted “inaccurate and unsupported” apprenticeship funding claims totalling £956,946 between April 2018 and May 2019.
An insolvency and companies court judge dismissed the case after finding that “primary responsibility” for submitting claims was “delegated” to his delivery manager, Christine Barton.
Barton has since claimed she was not approached to give evidence by the Insolvency Service ahead of the hearing and alleged the ruling contains “inaccuracies” about her role.
‘Not a details man’
In his evidence, Roderick – who was disqualified from being a director for three years in 2012 – said he was “not a details man” and suffered from “medical difficulties” including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which made it hard to manage operations.
Judge Mark Mullen concluded that while there were “undoubtedly errors” in claims that resulted in a net loss of £447,934 to the ESFA, he could not “infer” misconduct by Roderick on the evidence before him.
He added the Insolvency Service’s arguments that Roderick should have “liaised further” with staff to prevent errors came “nowhere near” convincing him.
Concluding his judgment, the judge said the claimants “failed to demonstrate, on the balance of probabilities, either misconduct on the part of Mr Roderick or, in any event, that he is unfit to be concerned in the management of a company.”
Judge Mullen added that the Insolvency Service’s investigation “inadequately” considered how responsibilities were divided between managers and “whether there were deficiencies in the supervision of Ms Barton and her team.”
What happened?
In February 2019, an ESFA funding review of apprenticeship claims Levytate made for 2017-18 and 2018-19 alleged a lack of evidence of apprentices’ start or end dates, issues with learning evidence, incorrectly calculated hours, and individual learner records “inconsistencies.”
Combined with audits later that year, the ESFA arrived at £956,946 in over-claimed funding, with £447,934 remaining owed.
It terminated Insight’s funding agreement in August 2019, resulting in the company entering liquidation that October.
The Insolvency Service didn’t file it’s director disqualification claim against Roderick until October 2022, alleging his conduct at Insight made him “unfit to be concerned in the management of a company.”
It tried to argue Roderick “cannot escape personal responsibility” for funding claims as the ESFA account was linked to his email address and payments were made into an account controlled by Debann Limited, a company he had sole control over.
The service also claimed Insight’s insolvency “could have been avoided” with “appropriate controls,” and there had been “significant harm to public finances” due to the irrecoverable £447,934.
Those arguments failed to convince the judge, who concluded that operations director Barton held “principal responsibility” for ensuring the accuracy of funding claims, not Roderick.
Barton’s denial
Barton adamantly denied having any role in claims made by Levytate when contacted for comment by FE Week.
She said: “I categorically refute the inaccuracies contained within the court papers.”
“Neither I nor any other individuals named in the documents, except for Mr Roderick, held operational responsibility for the day-to-day running of the business.”
“Any suggestion to the contrary is entirely false and misrepresentative of the facts.”
Her junior, “director of performance” Gemma Beech, also called the judge’s understanding of events “factually untrue” and denied ever working on ESFA claims.
Both Barton and Beech claimed the Insolvency Service failed to contact them for a statement ahead of the disqualification trial.
A spokesperson for the Insolvency Service refused to confirm whether or not Barton or Beech were contacted to give evidence about Roderick, claiming that this could impact future proceedings such as an appeal.
The ESFA, which investigated Levytate’s claims and provided the Insolvency Service with evidence, said: “We do not comment on individual cases.”
Roderick declined to comment.
Who is Carl Roderick?
Roderick, 50, has run a series of businesses over the last decade, including in education and e-sports – with several entering liquidation.
He first hit the headlines in 2012 after he was jailed for 33 months alongside his two brothers and banned from being a company director for three years for selling fraudulent insurance policies, according to a Birmingham Live article which was confirmed by Roderick.
The businessman resigned as a director of training provider AMS Nationwide, where Barton was also a director, a year before it shut its doors after having its ESFA funding terminated in 2018.
In early 2018, Roderick purchased Levytate.
A year later, the ESFA said it “had no record” of a change of ownership of the company, which is required by the apprenticeship funding rules.
After Levytate collapsed due to the ESFA’s investigation and contract termination in 2019, he founded e-sports company Adamo Gaming in 2021, which reportedly employed more than 30 people through the government-funded Kickstarter scheme.
When Levytate went bust, Roderick continued to own the holding company of Levytate, called Insight Development (Holdings) Ltd, and another e-sports company now known as Tenstar, which entered insolvency last August.
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