100 redundancies after administrators appointed to Cruden Group

Howard Smith and David Costley-Wood were appointed joint administrators of Cruden Group Limited, Cruden Construction Limited and Cruden Property Services Limited (The Group) today, July 31.

Based near Warrington and employing 126 people, the group operated within the construction and property services sectors predominantly across the North West of England.

Following losses on a number of contracts and additional costs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to contract delays, the directors took the difficult decision to place the company into administration.

Regrettably, upon appointment the administrators made around 100 employees redundant, with the remaining staff being retained to support the wind down of the business.

Agents have been appointed to realise value in the group’s construction and maintenance contracts, alongside other tangible assets including a freehold property.

Howard Smith, associate partner at KPMG and joint administrator, said: “While trading had been challenging for some time, the impact of COVID-19 was the final straw.

“Discussions to sell the business did not progress, leaving no option but to close.

“Our priority over the days ahead is to support those members of staff who have been affected by redundancy, providing them with any assistance they need.”

In June, North West care home provider Belong appointed Cruden to complete work on its £19m state-of-the-art care village in Birkdale – taking over from original contractor Pochin which had been working on the Oxford Road development when it went into administration last year.

However, late last month it terminated the contract, to protect its own interests in the scheme.

Following news of the administration, Belong’s chief finance officer, Chris Hughes, said: “It is incredibly sad that such a longstanding firm as Cruden has entered into administration and we sympathise with their employees and the sub-contractors affected.

“While there are, of course, implications for Belong Birkdale, we hope these will not be too significant as we had still been in the initial stages of engagement, prior to terminating the pre-construction services agreement last week.

“Belong is already back in control of the site, giving us more certainty around the future of the project.

“We are currently exploring all available options to progress with Belong Birkdale as quickly as possible.”