Plumber who didn't charge elderly customer gets £80k in public donations

A plumber who went viral after generously refusing to charge an elderly disabled woman to fix her boiler has received £80,000 in donations in less than a week - as he plans to extend his services across the country.

James Anderson, 52, from Burnley, risked bankruptcy after closing down his business to relaunch it as a not-for-profit company.

Now he is extending his philanthropy across the UK with the help of Depher, a crowdfunding site.

Over the last week, a bill for £0 that he sent to a 91-year-old woman with a terminal illness was posted online and went viral.

At the time of writing, the plumber had received £79,767 in donations as well as offers of holidays.

Mr Anderson said: "People are talking about doing it in America, France and Australia, and they're all going to contact me to get advice and guidance as to how to do it in their countries.

"Hopefully... we can bring all communities together for one common cause across the planet, so everybody who's elderly and disabled, not just in the UK, can benefit from something like this in society."

Mr Anderson claims before his fame he could barely afford to pay off his overdraft.

Now he wants to use the donations to help people outside Lancashire and hopes to expand across the country.

He added: "I had to lay two of the lads off because I couldn't afford it, then I had to go out and do the jobs myself as well as the paperwork, advertising, quotes and everything else.

"Now I can look at bringing them back. We don't just have to do Lancashire now. I'm going to be ringing local engineers in the wider area.

"We've had companies say they'll do all the advertising for us including a website, all free of charge. This is just the beginning of something that can be global."

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Mr Anderson racked up a lot of personal debt while trying to make his non-profit business work, but the public came to the rescue.

He concluded: "A lady from London rang up and put £2,000 in my personal bank account for me to pay towards my debt, and another gentleman rang up and put £1,000 in for me.

"That's £3,000 off the debt, which will keep the wolves from the door until I can get some more private jobs. That way I don't have to touch the funding, which I don't want to do."

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