Hundreds lose their jobs as Nottingham contractor sinks into administration

A Nottingham contractor with seven decades in business has collapsed into administration with the loss of close to 400 jobs.

J Tomlinson was founded in the 1950s as an electrical contracting firm and employed around 400 people.

In its last set of accounts, the firm, which carries out construction, maintenance, refurbishment, FM, engineering and renewable energy services, posted a turnover of £106m with a pre-tax loss of £657,000 in the year to September 2021.

But the firm earlier today appointed Raj Mittal and Nathan Jones of FRP Advisory as joint administrators after last-ditch efforts to bring more cash into the business failed.

Mittal said: “Despite its scale and the success achieved across a number of its divisions, the severe impact of covid and recent inflationary pressures meant that J. Tomlinson was not in a financial position to continue trading and so we have had to make the difficult decision to cease operations.”

He added that the joint administrators were now “assessing options on next steps and have started our engagement with clients and creditors regarding ongoing projects and liabilities”. The majority of the firm’s 400 staff have been made redundant, he added.

J Tomlinson chief executive Mark Davis said that, since the pandemic, the company had worked “tremendously hard to build the JTL brand across our chosen sectors with great success”. But the group’s position has been exacerbated by inflation, leading to its collapse.

“We as a board have worked tirelessly to attract additional overall finance into the group to invest for the future. Sadly today, we have to announce we have been unsuccessful in this regard.”