Administration drags on for collapsed M&E specialist

The process of winding down Haydon Mechanical & Electrical is continuing, a year after the company went into administration leaving £10m in debt behind it.

Jamie Playford, one of the joint administrators from insolvency practitioners Leading Business Services, has said that he was unable to conclude the administration, and is continuing to recover debts owed to the specialist before its various creditors can be paid out.

“I will, in due course, take steps to adjudicate unsecured claims and to distribute funds to secured creditors under their floating charge and to unsecured creditors out of the prescribed part,” Playford said in the latest progress report filed with Companies House.

Haydon called in Playford and Alex Dunton as joint administrators on 25 July 2023, a year after cashflow problems prompted it to enter into a company voluntary arrangement with its creditors.

The firm’s only secured creditor is its former owner the Mears Group, which is owed £2.2m in relation to a 2013 management buyout.

“No payments have been made to secured creditors under either their fixed or floating charge to date,” Playford confirmed in his latest report.

At the time it went in administration, a report from Leading revealed Haydon owed £9.6m to unsecured trade creditors when it collapsed. Two companies, Edmundson Electrical and Cardiff-based BSS Group, were owed more than £600,000 each.

In total, 225 unsecured creditors were listed in the latest progress report, with claims of £11.5m.

In the report, Playford said it is understood that Haydon M&E has been owed retention funds from three debtors across six unnamed projects. Because of the complex nature of the debt, the administrators instructed Robert Pearce Associates to assist in the collection of the sums owed.

It was also previously thought that Haydon was owed a VAT refund. But that seems to have been offset by liabilities owed to the HMRC, which Playford said is unlikely to receive any disbursement.

Haydon could trace its roots back to 1885, when it started as an ironmongery business. It later moved into heating and plumbing before specialising in mechanical and electrical engineering services.

The £66m-turnover firm posted a pre-tax loss of £6.2m in its most recent accounts for the 2021 calendar year.

Before its problems began, Haydon was focused on luxury high-rise residential buildings and worked on the 75-storey Landmark Pinnacle in Docklands (pictured), as well as the 52-storey One St George Wharf in Vauxhall.