Unsecured creditors of collapsed contractor Buckingham Group Contracting have lodged claims worth £308m, with administrators warning they are unlikely to recover any money.
Grant Thornton’s latest progress report put the eventual total of unsecured claims at an estimated £322.9m, three years after the Buckinghamshire firm entered administration.
The administrators said the prospect of a payout would depend on recovering outstanding debts owed to the company, but warned that a distribution to unsecured creditors was unlikely.
Rob Parker and Jon Roden said claims of £308m had been received from unsecured creditors by 3 September 2026, with the final figure expected to rise to £322.9m.
This represented an increase from £263.4m received six months earlier, when the total was predicted to be £300.8m.
Parker and Roden repeated that former employees had brought “several” claims for protective awards, which could add to the figures.
The latest progress report also revealed that talks were continuing in September between an additional administrator, Richard Tonks, and Swindon Borough Council (SBC) over payment for a troubled road project Buckingham was working on when it collapsed.
The 2.4km highway, designed to link New Eastern Villages with Commonhead roundabout near Great Western Hospital in the Wiltshire town, remained closed to traffic last month, with the local authority saying it discovered “a number of significant defects”.
SBC in September went to market for a contractor to repair a bridge on the connector road in a bid to allow construction traffic to use it.
Grant Thornton said Tonks had visited the highway in the last six months and inspected its defects, as well as reviewing “substantial additional information” and attending meetings with the council.
The latest progress report added: “A formal response has been received from SBC in relation to the letter-before-action issued in the prior period, in which SBC maintains there are no sums due to the company.”
Administrators said they had queries about some of the estimated costings provided by the council and said quantity surveyors and a former Buckingham contracts director were talking to the local authority’s advisers to “adjudicate the costs being asserted”.
Buckingham Group Contracting entered administration in September 2023 with the loss of about 500 jobs.
Grant Thornton said at the time that “legacy issues and ongoing losses” led to its downfall.
The firm had been working on Liverpool Football Club’s Anfield stadium and Fulham Football Club’s Craven Cottage stadium.
The High Court last month enforced an £8.7m adjudication award against Avison Young over alleged overpayments to Buckingham on a major Coventry earthworks project.
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