Norfolk County Council has axed engineering and construction group Jarvis from a £92m schools contract because it failed to secure the services of local contractors. Jarvis had won the Private Finance Initiative contract to improve buildings at 37 schools.
Shares in the company lost more than half their value when the firm also announced it had plunged deeper into financial crisis announcing losses for the year to March were £255m. The share price sank 53% to 15.5p.
Earlier this year, Jarvis’s bankers decided not to pull the plug on the firm after chairman Steven Norris convinced them that he had a plan to turn the group around.
In August, the firm was axed from a £174m schools building contract in Fife.
In July the company was fined £400,000 following an investigation by the HSE into a rail accident where a locomotive and wagons of a goods train derailed on a section of line maintained by the firm.