CPUK enters administration

Skelmersdale-based Construction Partnership UK has entered into administration after a hearing at Manchester High Court.

Minstrell Recruitment, one of the CPUK's creditors, is understood to have lodged a winding up petition against the company.

The decision follows the collapse of the company's largest ever contract, a mixed-use development site in Liverpool worth more than £23m to the company. Announced in January 2019, work ceased in November of that year and the entire project was put into administration earlier this year following the winding up of its main financier.

CPUK recently won a £3.6m tender to build an apartment scheme in North Staffordshire for the YMCA, which took its orders for the year above £80m.

However, the firm closed its nine live sites at the beginning of the coronavirus lockdown to protect employees and sub-contractors.

Steven Muncaster of administrators Duff & Phelps, said: "CPUK has come under increasing pressure over the past 12 months due to a combination of factors including an increasingly competitive market and raw material price increases. The company exhausted all options in terms of finding a solution to the current financial issues, caused by a combination of problem contracts and bad debts.

"The combined effect of these, coupled with the uncertain outlook for the construction industry in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic has caused a drain on the Company’s cash reserves and it had no other option but to appoint Administrators.”

Duff & Phelps said that CPUK employees will remain on furlough leave and that they are now looking at a sale of the business and assets of the company as a going concern in the first instance.

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