DT Anderson Construction was owed the money after Kinetics went into receivership earlier this year.

Owner Dave Anderson was written to with a promise of payment only days before Kinetics went bust.

The firm has now been forced to take direct action and erected a scaffold to strip materials from the Liverpool housing job in Muirhead Avenue including expensive aluminium guttering.

Officials at housing association client LMH called the police who said it was a “civil matter” and refused to intervene.

Anderson told the Liverpool Echo: “This has made me ill. I’ve been to the doctors 10 times since this started.

“I’ve got nine members of my family working for me, my three sons and some cousins, and they’re all going to be out of work if we don’t survive.

“We built this firm up to a turnover of £1m in the 10 years we’ve been going, but we’ve been destroyed overnight.

“We carried on buying the materials, but now we’re not going to get paid for them.”

Kinetics had the main contract to carry out maintenance for LMH.

The housing association paid Kinetics for the work, but Kinetics failed to pass the money on to DT Anderson Construction.

Anderson added: “We’ve offered to put it back free of charge if we get paid, and we’ve put in plastic ones to make sure there are no leaks, but I will pursue this until the day I die.”

AN LMH spokesman said: “Whilst we cannot condone the action taken by DT Anderson to remove fixtures from our properties, we fully sympathise with them and other subcontractors who were left with payments outstanding from Kinetics.”