70 jobs lost at Fakenham firm

A leading Norfolk specialist conservatory and pool house firm has been taken into administration and about 70 staff made redundant just months after trying to sort out its debts of more than �1million.

A leading Norfolk specialist conservatory and pool house firm has been taken into administration and about 70 staff made redundant just months after trying to sort out its debts of more than �1million.

Staff at Marston and Langinger were told their jobs were lost at the firm, based on Fakenham's George Edwards' Industrial Estate, on Friday, it is understood with immediate effect.

The London office of Manchester-based Begbies Traynor, a corporate recovery and insolvency firm, today confirmed they were appointed administrators as of this morning.

But said no more information was available at this stage.

Further staff at the firm's London Belgravia store and studios would have also been made redundant in the move.

At the end of July the EDP reported that M&L had been forced to sit down and thrash out a deal with its creditors after it blamed being hit by problems following last year's collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers.

It entered into a company voluntary arrangement with creditors, the biggest of which was HM Revenue Customs, which was owed �912,000.

At the time the firm was reported to have 75 staff in Fakenham, where it manufactured its buildings and homemade furniture, and 100 staff in total.

Its last set of accounts, which covered the 12 months to the end of February 2008, showed a pre-tax loss of �1.85m.

They were published ahead of the financial crisis that saw Lehman collapse and a number of other global institutions come close to failing with the subsequent knock on effect on bank staff and bonus.