By RACHEL SPENCER

A BOGUS workman has been preying on people in Sankey and Lymm and trying to dupe them with 'house of horror' stories in a bid to con them out of hundreds of pounds.

Two houses in Lymm and two in Sankey have received calls from a man claiming to be from a firm called National Maintenance Survey, who offered to carry out safety checks on their home.

Once inside, the workman produced a set of gadgets which he claimed could detect rising damp, rot and subsidence. Then, after supposedly assessing the houses, he told them that they needed to spend hundreds of pounds or risk losing their homes.

George Hall, from Cronulla Drive in Sankey, had a call from the conman on Friday. He was told that his house had rising damp and a salt problem that would cause it to sink, but that he could fix it for him the following Monday if he handed over £1,400.

As the fraudster wandered around the house with a bizarre gadget, Mr Hall was left to read a leaflet showing horrific pictures of houses that had sunk and crumbled, as part of the hard sell.

Mr Hall said: "He told me that if I didn't get the work done quickly then it would cause subsidence and the house would sink and we could end up with emphysema, asthma and even leukaemia."

Smelling a rat, Mr Hall declined to take him up on his offer and asked him to leave, and the man stormed off. Then Mr Hall checked out the man's story with a builder friend, who said that the man had told him an 'absolute load of nonsense'.

"I'm just concerned that you may get old people having the fear of God put in them," Mr Hall said. "Neighbours of mine have had phone calls as well and people need to know what's going on."

A spokesman for Cheshire police said that they had received a number of calls about this company. Anyone who receives similar calls is warned not to let the man into their home.