County Durham business lost thousands after Tolent collapse

Gareth Hutchinson was told none of the money owed would be returned

A subcontractor which was working on four sites when the construction firm Tolent collapsed has been told it will not receive any money it is owed.

High Rise Brickwork, based in Wingate, County Durham, was owed £183,000 after supplying labour to the firm.

Managing director Gareth Hutchinson said the business had to cut 35 jobs and had been left in debt.

Gateshead-based Tolent collapsed in February with the loss of more than 360 jobs.

This week, Mr Hutchinson was informed by administrators that the money owed in costs would not be returned.

'Debts owed'

"It's quite a substantial loss, quite a bit more than we originally thought," he said.

"We were left in debt with our creditors, which we have paid.

"In the last couple of days we've heard we would get nothing. It's is not just ourselves, there's a lot of other people in that boat."

The collapse of Tolent impacted businesses and subcontractors across the North East, and beyond, as work on sites was halted.

High Rise Brickwork said it had to lay off some of its workforce in the immediate days after.

Mr Hutchinson said: "We lost £1.1m worth of work overnight, we had to let the guys go, they didn't want to go, they were all happy.

"They hung around wanting to work for us, but unfortunately we didn't have the work to keep them on."

Tolent had been working on Durham's Milburngate development

Tolent had been working on developments including the flagship £85.5 Milburngate project in Durham, which administrators called "significantly loss-making".

The company, founded in 1983, had also been involved in several high-profile, multimillion-pound projects including Riverside Sunderland and Newcastle's tallest building, Hadrian's Tower.

At the time of its collapse, James Lumb and Howard Smith from Interpath Advisory were appointed joint administrators to the firm, and five of its operating subsidiaries.

Mr Lumb said Tolent had been "battling severe headwinds" including "spiralling costs", labour shortages and the loss of other companies in its supply chain, "all of which unfortunately resulted in one of its major contracts becoming loss-making".