A COUPLE who were forced to leave their Downend home for eight months after a fire have criticised the sentence handed to the police worker who started it.
Mark Pickford set fire to a tree on council-owned land next to Badminton Road on the evening of June 2, 2023.
The flames quickly spread through surrounding leylandii hedges, destroying two cars and badly damaging the home of Rosemarie and Dave Nugent.
Pickford, a neighbour, was arrested later the same evening and charged with committing arson while reckless as to whether life was endangered.
He denied the offence, telling a jury he was trying to remove a weed with white spirit, but was convicted last year after a trial at Swindon Crown Court.
Last month the Voice reported that 60-year-old Pickford, who later quit his job with the police, had been given a two-year suspended prison sentence.
Rosemarie said: “Although we didn’t think a custodial sentence would achieve anything, we certainly thought that some form of punishment would be forthcoming.
“In our view a suspended sentence, with no community service or even a fine, is not a punishment.
“People don’t understand the consequences of their actions, and we don’t have the justice system in this country to resolve them.”
On the evening of the fire Rosemarie and Dave had gone out for a meal at the Sandringham pub as they prepared to leave for a holiday to Canada in the early hours of the following morning.
A neighbour called to alert them to the fire and they ran home but could not get into their house, as it was unsafe. It was declared a crime scene for the next few days.
Rosemarie said their two BMW cars had “literally burned to the ground, and were ingrained into our concrete driveway”. It took two weeks for them to be removed.
The fire damaged the roof of the house, which had only been replaced that year, the render, windows and gutter.
There was extensive smoke damage inside, along with damage to the floor, electrics, gas supply and front door, which firefighters had to break down.
Rosemarie and Dave couldn’t live in the house for the first eight months of repairs, staying with one of their daughters rather than having to rely on temporary accommodation from the insurers.
She said: “Our financial losses are great, as we all know one never receives the true value from the insurers, so we dipped into our retirement savings to replace the cars with something similar to those that were destroyed, plus of course the excesses that we had to pay for five insurance claims.
“We are still discovering items that are missing, assumed burnt in the fire.
“It has changed our lifestyle, the stress has caused ill-health and it has robbed us of many months of our retirement.
“My children tell us we’ve aged because of it – we’ve changed.”
Rosemarie and Dave had been on good terms with Pickford before the fire.
The trees set alight had been planted years earlier by another resident on a verge, to shield homes from car headlights, and had become an eyesore.
But Rosemarie said there would have been better ways of dealing with them.
She said: “If it hadn’t been for the help of bystanders, who phoned the fire brigade, it could have been a lot worse – they were marvellous.”
After Pickford was sentenced an Avon & Somerset police spokesperson said he would be prevented from working in policing in the future, having resigned before a misconduct process could be completed.