Jehu Group went after more than 85 years in business

Unsecured creditors owed more by than £3m by collapsed Welsh firm Jehu Group have been told they are unlikely to see any of it returned.

In an update filed to Companies House, administrator Begbies Traynor said there will be “insufficient funds” for those firms owed a total of £3.2m by the company which sank into administration at the end of October after 85 years in business.

The figure includes £2.4m of intercompany loans while the update said employees were owed just over £62,000 in unpaid wages and missing holiday pay – although they are set to get their missing cash back. Jehu employed 104 people at the time of its collapse.

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Jehu sank into administration at the end of October after 87 years in business. Staff have been told they can expect to get missing wages and holiday pay back

Two secured creditors, finance firms DBW14 and DBW3, are owed £758,000 and £3.3m respectively with the administrator saying DBW3 will be paid back in full although DBW14 will “suffer a shortfall”. HMRC, owed close to £47,000, has also been told it won’t be paid in full.

Begbies Traynor’s report detailed further the problems the company ran into after the covid-19 pandemic struck in March 2020 which “brought severe disruption, followed [by] significant supply chain cost inflation. Delays in completing projects caused by the pandemic and subsequent cost increases caused a severe cashflow crisis that ultimately the group could not recover from.”

Joint administrator Huw Powell previously said cost increases of 25% on fixed-price jobs had ransacked the firm’s cash reserves which before the pandemic amounted to almost £7m in net assets in 2019.

It said spiralling costs on fixed-price jobs “significantly depleted” the firm’s cash reserves last summer while its cash worries were compounded after the firm’s main bank “sought to reduce the existing overdraft facility”.

The Bridgend-based contractor and developer formally went into administration on 28 October with sister companies Jehu Project Services and Waterstone Homes also sinking.

The group had 15 live projects for registered social landlords and local authorities in Wales and the South-west at the time of its collapse.

A last-minute attempt for Jehu to keep trading with an emergency bridging loan following a meeting with funders, the Welsh government and RSLs came to nothing, the report added.

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