Administrators for a scaffolding firm that collapsed in April have estimated that creditors will receive a payout.
In a statement of proposals, Sarah Cook and Miles Needham from FRP Advisory said that Hertfordshire-based Rodells entered administration owing £1.2m to unsecured creditors.
This includes £478,489 to former employees, £250,000 in lease obligations and £91,461 to the supply chain.
Rodells also owed £244,000 to online investment platform Funding Circle and £112,279 in an overdraft to HSBC.
“It is currently estimated that there will be sufficient funds available to make a distribution to unsecured creditors in due course,” Cook and Needham said in their report last week.
HSBC also holds a fixed and floating charge worth £2.3m. The bank will be paid “in full”, they added, partly from the sale of Rodells’ yard in London Colney, Hertfordshire, which is on the market for £1.6m.
The outlook is similarly positive for the £49,958 owed to preferential creditors – employees’ pay arrears, unpaid pension contributions and holiday pay.
The administrators also said they expect to pay secondary preferential creditor HMRC in full, although it has not yet lodged an outstanding Construction Industry Scheme-related claim worth £50,500.
Cook and Needham even said they estimate that “surplus funds” should be available to pay shareholders, although they did not specify an exact amount.
Rodells was founded in 1898 as a steeplejacking firm. Its jobs included providing scaffolding at the Wimbledon All England Tennis Club, to allow access to the timber frame of the venue’s new hospitality suite.
Unaudited accounts filed at Companies House, covering the year to 31 March 2024, showed Rodells had fixed assets of nearly £2m and about £108,200 in cash.
In their statement of proposals, the administrators said the company posted a net loss of £191,000 in its most recent financial year, from turnover of £5.8m.
The year before, Rodells generated a net profit of £217,000 from turnover of £6.2m.
Administrators said Rodells’ scaffolding pipeline “had dramatically reduced, while the cost of materials had increased, leading to severe cashflow pressures over the past 12 months”.
They added that the firm had obtained an unsecured loan, “personally guaranteed by one of the directors”, and that the directors “did not draw salaries to ensure costs could be met while new work was tendered”, but to no avail.
The firm ceased trading on 7 March with just £1,214 cash at hand.
At the time, the firm had 13 jobs in progress across 15 sites.
An attempt was made to sell the business. One offer was received but it was rejected as “not viable”, the administrators said in their report.
All 37 staff have been made redundant.
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Ben Vogel