The announcement means only the construction and social housing division in England can now be saved as administrator PwC clings onto the hope of finding a buyer.

Rob Hunt, partner and joint administrator, PwC said:

“Regrettably, the redundancies made today were necessary as it became clear in the last 24 hours that we were not going to be able to find a purchaser for these parts of the Group.

“Operations cannot continue and hence we have had to take steps to close both the maintenance and improvements division as well as the Scottish construction division. We have retained a small workforce to assist us in this process.

“We continue to maintain a dialogue with parties interested in the Construction and Social Housing business in England. This division employs approximately 500 people and we expect to have further updates during this week.”

One contractor told the Enquirer: “It’s becoming a familiar pattern now with PwC talking bullishly then interested firms pulling out once they see the state of the books.

“The English social housing and construction arms are the only hopes for a sale now.

“There should be at least a few contracts on the books within those two that people will be interested in but it’s amazing how quickly the whole thing has unravelled.

“The talk when PwC came in was about a competition to sell the whole group to the highest bidder and just a few days later they are scrabbling around to offload projects piecemeal on anyone who’s interested.”