THE suspended jail term handed to a Carlisle man who was convicted of a modern slavery offence after a vulnerable man was found living in a shed will not be increased, top judges have ruled.

The Court of Appeal was asked to review the sentence after a suggestion that it was 'unduly lenient'.

At the original sentence hearing in February, Judge Richard Archer was told that the prosecution accepted Peter Swailes junior was unaware of the squalid conditions in which the victim was kept.

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The court heard that the victim endured appalling conditions for up to 40 years, at times living in a horse box. The shed which was his home was unheated, dirty, and damp.

The defendant’s elderly father, also called Peter, who lived next to the shed on at site at Brampton Old Road, north of Carlisle, died before his case came to trial.

Solicitor General Alex Chalk today failed to persuade Appeal Court judges that the sentence given to Swailes junior, who admitted helping to exploit the victim by paying him below minimum wage for dangerous roof work, was too lenient.

Swailes junior, of Low Harker, Carlisle, Cumbria, admitted conspiring with his father, also called Peter, to financially exploit the man from July 2015, when the Modern Slavery Act came into law.

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Prosecutors accepted Swailes’ guilty plea on the basis that, although he had known the victim for many years, he was unaware of his living conditions.

A barrister representing Mr Chalk told a hearing in London that the sentence was unduly lenient.

Peter Ratliff told Lord Justice Holroyde, Mrs Justice Farbey and Sir Nigel Davis that a longer sentence should have been imposed and the jail term should not have been suspended.

But Lord Justice Holroyde said judges had concluded that neither the length of the term, nor the suspension, was unduly lenient, given the basis of Swailes’ guilty plea.

He said the case was “complicated and difficult”.

The vulnerable victim, who had a “very low” IQ of 59, was used and exploited during that period by Swailes’ father, who was his “boss” at the various “accommodations” over the years, judges heard.

Swailes’ father, who was 81 and died last year while awaiting trial after being accused of modern slavery offences, approached the man when he was aged about 18 and invited him to work with him doing various jobs.

In October 2018 the man was discovered by police living in a rotting, leaky shed near Carlisle, with no heating, no lighting and no flooring.

Swailes accepted that, from “time to time”, his father would contact him and arrange for the victim to undertake work with him, and that, “on occasion”, he paid him less than his minimum entitlement.

The case came after a three-year investigation by the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, supported by Cumbria Police and the National Crime Agency.

The victim, in his 60s, now lives in supported accommodation outside Cumbria and has been helped by City Hearts, a charity providing long-term support to survivors of modern slavery.

The defendant's father had denied the modern slavery charge he was accused of. The court heard that his dog lived in more comfortable conditions that the man found living in the shed at the caravan park on Brampton Old Road, Carlisle.

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