Hundreds of jobs go at builders

The construction group employed hundreds of people

Hundreds of redundancies have been made at Wrekin Construction Group after it went into administration.

Administrators Ernst & Young said the 420 redundancies at bases across Shropshire, Yorkshire, Northamptonshire and Cheshire were announced on Tuesday.

A skeleton staff of 70 has been kept on at the Shropshire headquarters to help administers "wind down the business", a spokesman for the accountants said.

Wrekin said it had millions of pounds of orders but had cash flow problems.

It was announced on Tuesday that the firm had gone into administration.

The firm blamed Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) for its predicament because the bank would not extend credit to cover cash-flow problems.

However, RBS said Wrekin was unsustainable due to "creditor pressure".

Wrekin also has subsidiaries in Staffordshire and Scotland.