Rok Goes Into Administration

The Exeter based building services company Rok, has today confirmed they have been forced to call in Administrators after earlier showing £3.8m loss for the opening 6 months of this year.

The Administrators have maintained that all of 4,000 strong workforce at the company are going to continue to be paid whilst buyer is sought.

 In the build up to the latest financial figures being released, the group were quoted as saying they had uncovered ‘serious failings’ in both the financial and the operational controls.

Both Rok plc and Rok Building Limited have been placed in administration.

Rok works for councils, schools, housing associations and businesses.

It is among the leading providers of building services to affordable housing and insurance customers.

The announcement comes just 10 weeks after social housing firm Connaught entered administration - leading to some 1,400 redundancies.

At that time, Rok said it was in a strong position to pick up some of Connaught's former contracts.

In a statement on Monday, Rok said, "The board of Rok plc announces that it has resolved to put the company into administration and to make an application to the Financial Services Authority to suspend the listing and trading of the company's ordinary shares."

Joint administrator and partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Mike Jervis, said, "Our immediate priority is to urgently review the financial position of the company and seek a buyer of the businesses.

"Employees will naturally be concerned about their position, but they will continue to be paid if they attend work and perform their duties as normal."

Last month, Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) signed a four year contract worth £32m with Rok to handle every stage of most of its building projects.

The deal covered the design of buildings through to their construction and completion.

Its previous work for the enterprise agency includes building Inverness's £22m Centre for Health Science.

Posted at 04:47PM Nov 08, 2010 by Marc Stenton in Insolvency  |  Comments[0]