North and islands building firm went under owing £3.5m

Scottish building firm UBC Group, which fell victim to the downturn in the construction industry more than five years ago, collapsed owing creditors £3.5 million, administrators AlixPartners have revealed.

The firm had annual turnover of £31 million and employed 277 full-time staff, including 133 in Inverness and throughout bases at Stornoway, South Uist, Glasgow, Dundee and Bathgate, but crashed in May 2012 with bosses blaming a “general downturn” in the building industry meaning companies were unable to pay them for work.

More than 250 people worked as sub-contractors for the group, which was better known as Uist Builders in the islands after being built up by the Peteranna family on South Uist.

It later emerged the company folded with debts of more than £11million.

UBC owed an estimated £4 million to the Bank of Scotland, which has since received about £1.9million from the administrators.

As a secured creditor, the bank had first call on any money raised from the sale of UBC’s assets.

In a recent progress report, joint administrators Anne O’Keefe, Elizabeth Mackay and Fraser Gray of AlixPartners revealed ordinary creditors would get nothing.

“There were insufficient realisations to enable a dividend to be paid to the unsecured creditors of the company,” they said.

Their report added: “Based on the SOA (statement of affairs), unsecured creditors are estimated to total £3.5million.”

AlixPartners said UBC owned 20 properties – some of them held as security by the bank – at the time of its collapse.

The properties were all sold, with the last of them – a unit at Lochboisdale pier on South Uist – being disposed of in March of this year, raising £45,000.

AlixPartners said it had filed a notice at court for the dissolution of the business, meaning the administration will end on or before November 7.

After the firm crashed, work on two significant island projects – the £4.5 million Harris House care home at Tarbert as well as a £3.5million scheme for 22 new homes at Stornoway – were mothballed.

The administrators said the company “experienced cash-flow problems due to extremely challenging trading conditions”.

UBC’s collapse also led to construction bosses in Scotland appealing for government financial assistance to keep other building firms from going to the wall.