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Contractor Lakehouse collapsed owing creditors £27m

Social housing contractor Lakehouse owed creditors more than £27m when it fell into administration, an administrators’ report has revealed.

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Collapsed contractor Lakehouse owes creditors £27m #ukhousing

Lakehouse sold subsidiary worth £3.6m for just £1, says administrator #ukhousing

Lakehouse, the firm which worked for a number of housing associations and councils when it was in operation, ceased trading in March and is now in liquidation. A report by administrator CMB Partners said 275 creditors have come forward with claims worth £25.6m with another £1.5m expected.

The latest figure marks a trebling of the original estimate of what was owed, which was initially around £9m.

Several subcontractors “dispute the level of works carried out on a given contract”, the administrator added.

In August last year, it was announced that Lakehouse would be selling its construction and property business, which included its property maintenance business Foster Property Maintenance to Mapps Group for an initial £500,000.

A part of the business, which focuses on compliance and energy services, that wasn’t sold was then renamed Sureserve in October. Sureserve is still in operation.


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However, in March this year it was confirmed that the part of the Lakehouse business that was sold to Mapps had gone into administration.

The joint liquidators are now reviewing why Lakehouse had valued the shares held in its Foster Property Maintenance subsidiary – which was historically loss-making – at £3.6m in its accounts. Foster was sold for £1 by Lakehouse before the administrators were called in.

The company also said that it had now carried out a report “on the conduct of the directors” at Lakehouse and this had been submitted to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy under the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986.

Meanwhile, Lakehouse is owed an estimated £2.6m by contract debtors, down from £8.7m before administration.

The company is expected to make £2.9m in total assets including this debt, office fixtures and fittings and cash at bank after employee and administration costs.

In October, the Metropolitan Police confirmed it had charged 10 people following a fraud investigation relating to work carried out in Hackney Council’s housing stock as part of a contract with Lakehouse.

Lakehouse was responsible for the fire alarms at Grenfell Tower.

Shortly after the fire, Hackney mayor Philip Glanville wrote to the chief executives of all councils with housing warning them to check fire safety work carried out by Lakehouse.

In its last published accounts for 2017, Lakehouse reported a small profit of £10,000 having lost £29.3m the previous year.

Update: at 16.32pm 20/08/19 In line with information in the CMB Partners report, this article previously stated that Foster Property Maintenance had a balance sheet value of £3.6m before being sold for £1. Following a clarification from CMB Partners, the article has now been updated to make it clearer that £3.6m reflects Lakehouse’s valuing of the shares held within Foster in its accounts.

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