AN Alcester man who started a fire outside the front of a sleeping couple’s home in the middle of the night has been jailed.

A Judge heard that the couple fled from their home with their six children and a relative after being woken by the flames outside their bedroom window.

The fire which put the lives of Karl and Lucy Payne and their family at risk had been started by Paul Andrews over a grudge against Karl’s brother John Payne.

Andrews, 25, of Beauchamp Road, Alcester, pleaded guilty to arson being reckless whether lives would be endangered, and was jailed for six-and-a-half years at Warwick Crown Court Prosecutor Shane Crawford said that in May last year Andrews was in a relationship with a whose previous partner had been John Payne.

On the night of May 17 John was staying with the Paynes at their home in Glebe Road, Stratford. Andrews remained angry with John over a confrontation between them the previous day.

He spent much of the day drinking, and continued at the home of Anthony Phillips, with whom he smoked crack cocaine before they visited Lawrence Rawlings, where Andrews took heroin.

Andrews suggested they go to Stratford, stopping to get a petrol can from his mother’s home and then at a petrol station where Mr Rawlings put fuel in his car and the petrol can, assuming it was for Andrews’s motorbike.

But as they continued into Stratford Mr Rawlings stopped and ordered the other two out because Andrews was ‘talking as if he was some form of gangster.’ Mr Phillips then followed Andrews to Glebe Road where, at 2.45am, he doused four vehicles outside the Paynes’ semi-detached home in petrol and set light to them.

The nearest vehicle was less than two metres from the front of the house, but fortunately Karl and Lucy were woken by the bright light, and the sound of windscreens popping. They got everyone out of the house unscathed, but all four vehicles were insurance write-offs.

Mr Crawford said Andrews was suspected, but when he was arrested later in the year he originally pleaded not guilty before changing his plea on the day of his trial.

Karl Payne has said that since the fire his eldest daughters have had trouble sleeping, and two even fled indoors when the flames of a barbecue flared up in front of them.

Graeme Simpson, for Andrews, said: “His account is that he lit the can of petrol and threw it under the car which was furthest from the house, the people-carrier.”

He pointed out that the damage to the other vehicles was consistent with that, and that Andrews was clearly under the influence of a cocktail of substances at the time.

Recorder Kevin Hegarty QC told Andrews: “You took it into your head to take a step of revenge against John Payne, who you believed would be in that house that night.

“It was the dead of night, and the fire was set towards the front of the house where one might expect people inside to try to funnel out.

“You then left the scene as the fire took hold. You did nothing to alert anyone, and did not even call 999 to say you had seen a fire. This was a planned revenge attack on that property. You showed no remorse.”