Bedlington construction company reveals it lost almost £1 million when Tolent went bust

The building company, who employs around 40 people from Bedlington, Ashington and Durham, has worked with Tolent on many jobs over the past 10 years.

At the start of 2023, contracts with Tolent were making up around 40% of the company’s work, so when it went bust owner Michael Thompson became extremely worried about the money he was about to lose.

He said: “We’ve worked for Tolent for 10 years and they’ve had money problems in the past, which led for everyone to have 60-day payment terms, which isn’t unusual in the construction industry.

“This time, the payment problems started in December. We were getting instant payments which is unusual, but I wasn’t too worried because there was effort there to get us paid.

“January was similar but we were told money was a bit tight, but it would fine by March. It happens with all companies at different periods, so I thought it was just a rough patch and we stuck with it.”

By the time Tolent went into administration in February, they owed the Bedlington based firm 14 weeks’ worth of money across around five sites.

Michael added: “From 2022 they must have know their finances were up against them, but we were kept in the dark. I wasn’t looking for other work at that time because we were busy.

"Tolent owe us £938,000, without including profit it still would’ve been at least £700,000.

“Since then, we’ve retained all of our staff but at that point we didn’t have enough work to go around for everybody, so I’d give people paid days off.

“Obviously there was a lot of people wanting to know what was happening and it was tough. It wasn’t nice, but I knew I could sustain it.

“We’re back in full swing now but the painful thing is now it’s like starting a brand new company.”

The firm has now secured a contract with Northumberland County Council to build Berwick Leisure Centre’s new car park.

Michael added: “The work in Berwick has been good. I’ve got a lot of staff members working on that and it has put us in a good position after taking such a massive loss.”