As suspected the gentleman web designer who stepped in to redesign the defunct LPUK.org website has found himself owed hundreds of pounds.

He posted to a web designers forum warning web designers not to deal with LPUK:

I spoke to the designer on the phone he’s irked that a principle was violated, and does not believe bad payers should get away with it which is why he put his work beyond use. There was some, though not much, solidarity for me on account of my tiny £30 unpaid bill.

Beyond the protection of this principle he doesn’t particularly want to get involved. Unfortuntely this chap is not the first person to to be owed money by LPUK or it’s officers, and he was supportive of an article being published so that LPUK members know what has occurred.

Privately, Andrew Withers promised that the money was available before the project began back in June 2011. With increasingly reassuring words the hardworking web designer was promised that money would indeed be paid. At one stage Withers blamed his problems paying for the LPUK website on the fact that one of his own business contacts had been hospitalised with pneumonia. Later, confusing causes with consequences, he blamed the website outage and associated loss of £15 party memberships for the inability to make a token initial payment against the professional designer’s substantial bill.

Publically, he has hinted at a different explanation for the technical difficulties, mentioning an upgrade to “security measures”. Earlier, his blogging lambasted unknown “hackers and blaggers”.

WordPress, an off the shelf blogging platform, has been installed on the website since the outage began. I am certain it did not run WordPress before the outage and the webbie tells me his work was based on Joomla. The wholesale change of platform implies the work now being caried out goes well beyond the installation of “security measures” to the existing site.

UPDATE: See the bigger picture after I had a look at the leaked data on LPUK’s overall financial position and compared the published accounts. Also, note that the first designer was not me, those close to the issue know the score.