Roofing firm says being called back to carry out repairs on one scheme sent it tumbling into red

Having to carry out repair work on a problem job helped send roofing firm Lindner Prater sinking to a £9m loss last year.

The firm said making a “provision for remedial work on one significant project” meant it slipped into the red in 2021 from a pre-tax profit of £6m for the year before.

Lindner Prater, which has been owned by German firm Lindner since it bought Prater in 2011, did not name the job but last year Building revealed that a flagship building built by Mace for broadcaster Sky in west London was having to be repaired because of a leaking roof.

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Prater was the original roofing contractor on Sky Central, built by Mace, which was called back last year to carry out repairs after the roof sprang a series of leaks

Called Sky Central, the £220m building, designed by Amanda Levete’s practice AL_A, was completed in 2016 and has been showered with a host of accolades.

Lindner Prater was the original roofing contractor on the scheme but the flat roof of the 41,000 sq m building ended up being plagued by a series of leaks.

In its 2021 accounts, Lindner Prater said the firm had to make a series of job losses because of the impact of the pandemic which saw turnover for the year slip 36% to £35.6m. It said the fall in income was particularly severe at its unitised facades division.

The accounts also reveal that Lindner Prater and sister firm Prater merged into one company last April which it said “will provide a better and more comprehensive offer to our customers” adding that the decision would also produce a series of cost savings.

It said its order book for this year was “strong” with the firm eyeing HS2, nuclear and other infrastructure schemes.

Over the summer, Lindner Prater rejigged its senior management team with chief executive Richard Unwin, who joined the company as a teenager in 1983, and long-standing operations director Mark English, who joined in 1986, both stepping down in July.

The firm said Gavin Hamblett, who has been with the business 16 years, would lead Lindner Prater as managing director having been first appointed to the role in 2015. At the same time, it added that Martin Schmidhuber, a former boss of Lindner’s operations in China, was joining the UK board “to represent the Lindner Group”.

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