400 jobs to go after ‘devastated’ CEO confirms end of the road for major contractor

Around 400 jobs will be lost after the CEO of major East Midlands contractor confirmed his firm is set to cease trading and appoint administrators from FRP Advisory.

J Tomlinson, which has its head office in Beeston, posted a notice of intention to appoint administrators on Monday morning (June 10).

Apart from its Beeston head office, J Tomlinson has bases in Sutton Coldfield, Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Wigan, Derby, Sheffield, Doncaster, Wakefield and Bulwell, Nottingham.

Mark Davis, CEO of the firm, says the outcome is “tragic”.

In a statement, which he signed off as “Yours, devastated”, he said: “It is with a heavy heart that I have to announce that J Tomlinson will be filing a notice of intention to the court today to enter into administration, the proposed administrator will be FRP Advisory, which we anticipate will take place later today.

“JTL have a number of divisions across Facilities Management, Regeneration, Refurbishment, Engineering Services, and Care. It is the latter division which has been battling long term contracts with hyper inflation, schemes priced pre-Covid which ultimately has impaired the groups cashflow.

“We as a board have worked tirelessly to attract additional overall finance into the group to invest for the future. Sadly today, we have to announce we have been unsuccessful in this regard.

“Since Covid impacted the world and the local business community, we have worked tremendously hard to build the JTL brand across our chosen sectors with great success which is testament to all our people.

“We have many very long service colleagues who have spent a good portion of their lives supporting our business, along with their family and friends, we hoped we would end their journey with a bright future for the next generation, sadly we have run out of time.

“I would like to express my gratitude to the JTL family for their proactive attitude to our customers, to each other and the supply chain who have supported us over a long period of trading and especially post-Covid and the impact this outcome will have on them, and their business and their employees.

“We have employees with 30 years time invested and customers lasting 15-20 years which is incredible and tragic.

“We have done our upmost to communicate timely and provide the support to our teams which is very difficult when decisions of this magnitude are taken and implemented in the tightest of timelines.

“We will do our utmost to provide support and guidance throughout the forthcoming difficult period.

In its latest available accounts, made up to the end of September 2021, J Tomlinson saw turnover increased to £106.2m from £95m in 2020. However, the firm made an operating loss of £616,000 as clients continued to postpone or delay projects at short notice because of the ongoing impacts of Covid.

Looking forward, the J Tomlinson warned that the war in Ukraine would increase the cost of materials even further.

At the time, the company employed 460 people.

Raj Mittal and Nathan Jones of FRP were confirmed as joint administrators on Monday afternoon.

Mittal said: “Despite its scale and the success achieved across a number of its divisions, the severe impact of Covid and recent inflationary pressures meant that J Tomlinson was not in a financial position to continue trading and so we have had to make the difficult decision to cease operations.

“We’re now assessing options on next steps and have started our engagement with clients and creditors regarding ongoing projects and liabilities. We are providing support for affected staff in making applications to the Redundancy Payments Service.”