A YOUNG businessman from Blackburn has been given a six-year ban for a string of cash withdrawals which left a Lancashire firm owing more than £350,000.

Oliver Jack Oxley, 26, carried out a series of transactions involving the directors loan account at family firm Oxleys Design and Build (ODBL), according to the Insolvency Service.

He knew he could not repay the money without 'risky speculation', or gambling, and had breached his financial responsibilities towards the company, investigators from the agency found.

Oxley, then of Tongue Hill Farm, Bowden Avenue, Pleasington, has now been told he cannot be named as a company director until 2025.

Insolvency officials began a probe after the collapse of ODBL, formerly registered to offices in Leyland, late last year.

Oxley was found to have first withdrawn £65,690, some time before the end of November 2014, but only repaid £37,500.

This was followed by a series of similar transactions, the next financial year, with £188,085 taken but only £70,469 returned.

In 2015-16, he was found to have withdrawn £649,187 but only delivered £479,740 back. In January 2018 he also increased his director's loan account undertakings by another £41,400.

An entry on the Insolvency Service's register of disqualified directors reads: "He has confirmed he was unable to repay the director’s loan account as he did not have the assets or money with which to repay, thereby causing ODBL to become insolvent."

The same inquiry found he had paid a relative £60,056, again in January 2018, when he knew the company was insolvent, though the loan was repaid. A relative loaned him £50,000 but he was found to have used the money for his own ends.

When ODBL, which was first incorporated in 2013, went into liquidation, the firm also owed £102,022 in corporation tax. The overall liability was said to be £134,018.

The debts included £5,000 to Barclaycard and a further £6,994 to RFM, a Leyland-based accountants firm, according to company's administrators RSM Recovery.

Oxley, who is thought to have worked in the industry since leaving school, owed £356,832 as a result of the same proceedings and declared himself bankrupt in October last year, according to the same register.