Bardsley land sale boosts creditors’ coffers
The collapsed contractor’s administrator has sold two plots at Dukinfield Golf Club to housebuilder Elan Homes for £1.8m, and extended the administration period for a further two years to increase the chances of delivering a financial return for creditors owed £45m.
In its most recently published report on Bardsley Construction, Duff & Phelps said a total of £1.2m from the land sale will go towards repaying the company’s creditors, after £600,000 of the proceeds was apportioned to the company that owned the golf club. That company is also now in administration.
Tameside-based Bardsley collapsed in December 2019 after running into trouble on three major projects that caused a £3.2m hit to its bottom line, according to previous administrators’ reports.
Duff & Phelps said in its latest report that 200 former employees owed a combined £220,000 would be repaid in full.
The company’s unsecured creditors can also expect to receive a dividend, although how much they will be paid is still currently unknown, the report said.
FEC’s Mount Yard in Manchester was one of Bardsley’s unfinished projects
To maximise potential realisations of dues for creditors, the administration period has been extended and is now scheduled to conclude on 18 December 2022, three years after Duff & Phelps was first appointed.
The rationale behind the extension, the administrator said, is to recoup money owed by debtors that falls due in 2022.
Bardsley was on site with 11 design-and-build projects when it went into administration, and was owed £11m from its clients, according to the administrator. So far, £1.4m has been recovered from three clients – Trafford Housing, Onward Homes and Regenda Group.
Projects in Bardsley’s in-tray at the time of its collapse included Mount Yard for Far East Consortium at Meadowside in Manchester city centre; elderly care scheme Albion Mill in Blackburn for Penmaric and healthcare developer VVHC; an apartment block for Mulbury Homes on Manchester’s Blossom Street; and a construction skills centre for Tameside College.
However, even if the administrator manages to recoup additional funds, there is ongoing uncertainty around the total value of creditor claims.
“There are so many uncertainties here, notwithstanding the fact that creditors have still yet to prove their claims to be adjudicated by the joint administrators,” Duff & Phelps’ report said.
Bardsley is one of a string of mid-sized contractors to fail in the North West in the last few years after running into trouble on problem jobs without sufficient cash to continue.
Others include CPUK, Goodwin’s Construction Services Group and Cruden Construction.
