Many of the 90 staff at the £50m turnover building firm have just been laid off by administrators from Grant Thornton.

The business was set up just over 20 years ago and worked throughout the south of England on small healthcare, school and social housing jobs.

It has delivered around 40 healthcare projects in recent years and has several school projects on the go.

These include a £2.8m sports hall build for Bay House School in Gosport, £2m extension job for Hurstpierpoint College in Hassocks, West Sussex and a similar size project at Orley Farm School in Harrow.

Farnrise’s mounting problems began to emerge last year as suppliers began to struggle to get paid.

Louisa Morgan, operations manager at debt recovery agency Top Service said: “In May 2013 we began alerting our members to the potential risks of dealing with Farnrise Construction due to the increased volume of negative reports.

“With over 165 adverse trading experiences being reported to us within the past 12 months this led to us last year, removing their credit limit to safeguard our members.

“This advanced intelligence enabled us via our debt recovery service and chasing Letter Service to recover over £400,000 of debt from Farnrise.”