A £5m fraud trial collapsed after a judge ruled that Derby City Council failed to handle evidence properly, leaving defendants unable to get a fair trial. Derby City Council’s trading standards team brought the prosecution against Motor House UK in 2019, leading to the arrest of five men accused of fraudulent trading and fraud by false representation over individual vehicle sales. The case was built after a Derbyshire Police raid on Motor House UK’s Alfreton Road premises in 2019, where officers seized thousands of files, including invoices, customer records and refund documentation. A van was needed to transport the material. The five men, Mark Whitfield, Sukhvinder Rana, Shane Wilson, Jordan Whitfield and David Crossley, all pleaded not guilty to the charges. The trial began on 5 May and was stopped on 12 October at Derby Crown Court. In court, trading standards officer Donna Dowse said not all seized material was copied or scanned before it was reviewed or returned. She said officers carried out a “selective extraction exercise”, and some original paperwork was later returned. The judge, district judge Chris Carter, said there were serious problems with how documents were sealed and with keeping a clear record of handling and storage. Dowse also acknowledged errors and inconsistencies in systems she later devised to reconstruct continuity. The ruling also pointed to concerns about former trading standards contractor Ray Bigg, an ex-police officer who played a key part in the investigation. After leaving the authority “under a cloud”, seized documents, witness exhibits and investigation records were found to have been kept in his personal possession, including material later used at trial. Dowse said she did not know Bigg had retained evidence personally and there was no record of when it left secure storage or whether everything had been returned. Carter described the situation as “astounding” and said the integrity of the evidence chain had been compromised. He stayed the indictment as an abuse of process, concluding a fair trial was no longer possible because the missing records were central to the questions of guilt or innocence.