UNPAID bills by the boss of former discount furniture stores in Bolton and Bury have finally caught up with him - three years on.

An investigation by the Insolvency Service has seen Altaf Dawood Patel disqualified as a director for six years following the demise of Factory Clearance Ltd.

His outfit, which dealt in cut-price furniture and homeware, had stores in Corporation Street, Bolton, and the Market Street area of Bury.

But it was the Bury premises which would prove to be Mr Patel’s undoing, according to details just released by the government agency.

It was alleged that Mr Patel, 48, of Blackburn Road, had allowed Factory Clearance to trade to the detriment of creditors between February to April 2016.

This conduct is said to have contributed to the “increased insolvency” of the company, which eventually went under shortly afterwards.

A High Court hearing was told that the company, which was first incorporated in October 2013, ran up a liability for non-domestic rates for Factory Clearance premises in Bury from December 2014 onwards.

Mr Patel is said to have acknowledged that the debt, which totalled £67,460, could not be satisfied but the company continued to trade while insolvent.

The liablity notice was served on the businessman at the beginning of February 2016, the court heard.

But within three weeks, Mr Patel was found to have taken out a £65,000 loan, which was received into the company’s bank account.

The trader has accepted he took out the loan while there was a risk that the company could eventually fail.

Later it emerged that Mr Patel, between February 26 and April 6 that year, withdrew £59,300 from Factory Clearance’s accounts.

This included a combination of private cash payments, directly from the company’s bank account, and individual transfers between the firm’s holdings and his own private bank account. The company eventually ceased trading in April 2016.

Factory Clearance was eventually wound up, the following April, on the petition of Preston City Council, over an unspecified unpaid debt. Mr Patel's only other directorship was for AS Villas, which was dissolved last May.