Main contractor payment delays pushed Dancourt into administration

Image: Dancourt’s work on Hinkley Point (image: www.dancourt.co.uk)

Bristol-based subcontractor Dancourt Construction collapsed into administration owing more than £5m to creditors after struggling to recover interim payments and retentions from main contractors, it has emerged.

The company, founded in 2002 and with an annual turnover of around £15m, called administrators in July this year. A total of 103 staff were made redundant.

A report filed in Companies House by Jonathan Williams of administrator Bishop Fleming said the subcontractor hit trouble after delays in receiving payment from main contractors on key projects.

At the time of the administrator’s appointment, it had around £2.57m in payments outstanding.

Just over £2m of that was due to the company in respect of interim payments on construction contracts, while another £516,000 was due in respect of retentions.

Bishop Fleming’s report said that preferential creditors, owed around £182,000, would receive an estimated 48.05p in the pound.

How much the unsecured creditors, owed a total of £5.2m, would receive depended on how much could be retrieved from the long-term construction contracts on which Dancourt was owed money. Bishop Fleming said there was "significant uncertainty" over how much could be realised from those contracts and that the potential return to unsecured creditors was also uncertain.

Dancourt offered groundworks, civil engineering and concrete frame services, and also had a plant hire arm.

It worked across the South West, with projects including work on the Hinkley Point nuclear site, a number of schools, and the Ashton Gate football stadium in Bristol.