LOVED-UP cousins who fiddled their company books to cheat the taxman out of £220,000 also liquidated their business in Andover leaving unpaid debts of over £250,000 to Test Valley Borough Council, the Advertiser can exclusively reveal.

Cunning Miriam Simcock, 64, and Gordon Matchett, 71, ran three engineering firms including Freepower, which changed its name to Waste2Energy in 2012.

The Reith Way-based business operated in the town from 2010 until earlier this year before going into liquidation leaving behind £251,033.19 worth of unpaid debts from 2011/12 to 2014/15.

The pair, who are cousins and lovers, were arrested in January 2013 in connection to a separate VAT fraud and were given suspended jail terms earlier this year.

TVBC,which has written off the debts, initially refused to tell the Advertiser the name of the company. We were forced to submit a Freedom of Information Act request, which requires councils to respond within 20 working days. TVBC took 36 When the Advertiser finally received the FOI result, a spokesman for TVBC said it did not initially release the name of the firm due to the “commercial relationship” between them.

But the authority added: “ However, on reflection, given that the company was no longer in existence, such information would no longer be classed as exempt information and so the name of the company could have been shared upon request.

“We regret that this caused an unnecessary delay in providing this information and apologise for this. We also wish to apologise for the late response to the FOI.”

Asked about the debts, the spokesman said: “The council is not able to pursue recovery action on outstanding debts once a company is in administration.

“The council carried out its usual collection procedure with Waste2Energy and obtained a liability order from the Magistrates’ Court for the outstanding debts. Following site visits, enforcement agents confirmed that there were no assets available that could be seized to repay all or part of the debt at that time.”

In April this year Simcock and Matchett, who ran three engineering firms, were spared jail after Salisbury Crown Court heard they had faked invoices to claim inflated VAT payments between January 2011 and December 2012. The duo, of Wilton Road, Burcombe, also duplicated claims and fiddled VAT records. One of the three firms, Freepower Europe, became Waste2Energy.

Simcock was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for two years, for conspiracy to cheat public revenue. Matchett was given a one-year jail term, also suspended for two years. Both were disqualified from running businesses for five years. Despite attempts to contact the couple, the requests were was no response as the Advertiser went to press.