Sunderland firm aims to save 150 jobs at Tolent after company went into administration

Brims Construction, with former Tolent chairman John Wood, has come to the rescue of Tolent’s Teesside employees and operations.

Tolent went into administration on February 13, with most of its workforce made redundant immediately.

The Brims Construction rescue will see Tolent’s previous Teesside management team re-employed by Brims, along with staff, operatives and members of the supply chain.

The team said is is aiming to ensure minimum disruption to clients.

Some sites already returned to work on Monday, February 20.

Brims, which has said it will not be taking on responsibility for reimbursing any of Tolent’s creditors.

The company, which is forecast for a £38million turnover this year and employs 90 site and office staff, was established 16 years ago by Ian Clift, Jason Wood and Richard Wood.

All were previously employed by Tolent, which was founded by John Wood – Jason and Richard’s father.

Brims director Richard Wood said the company had been looking to expand further south and open an office in Teesside, but had not envisaged it happening this way.

He said: “Following the announcement on February 13 that Tolent had gone into administration with the loss of 350 jobs, we took action immediately as it is a company very close to our hearts.

"My father set Tolent up, but Ian, Jason and I all trained and worked there, with John only retiring three years ago as chairman.

“Its unfortunate demise has provided an opportunity for the future expansion of Brims and at the same time, we are hopeful of providing secure employment for up to 150 employees moving forward.

“The former Tolent sites will be re-badged as Brims Construction and our sole aim is to save jobs with the minimum of disruption to clients.

"We have spent the last few days talking to clients and reassuring them that their projects will proceed as normal, with the people they have previously been dealing with. We are confident we can minimise any job losses by quickly stepping in this way.”

Tolent’s Teesside office was working on a mix of commercial projects including a rolling programme of petro-chem maintenance works. In total the value of the ongoing work is estimated to be around £15-£20million.

Mr Wood continued: “Several clients have already recognised our new proposal is simply to provide them with the same group skillset of people but with a stronger company behind them.

"We have already received new orders for work, which helps save the previous workforce, for which we are all extremely grateful.

"We are currently dealing with the administrator, in order to buy the Tolent Teesside office building at Thornaby and it is very much our intention to put firm roots down in Teesside.”

John Wood added: “It gives me great pleasure to be able to offer my help with these proposals, especially with Brims being central to it. It keeps the construction heritage alive under the Brims name and it will hopefully salvage some of the work that Tolent was previously involved with.

"We are confident that we will save as many site and supply chain jobs as we can and I would encourage all existing management and site staff to feel encouraged at what we are doing.

“It is great news for the region. We just want to save the jobs and get work back on track.”

Tolent was founded in 1983 by John Wood. By the time he retired in 2019, turnover was around £180million with a strong balance sheet and the firm was viewed as one of the region’s success stories.

The company was appointed in June 2022 to lead construction of 135 “ultra-modern” houses as part of the ‘Vaux neighbourhood’ at the Riverside Sunderland development – the first of an expected 1,000 homes which are slated to double the number of people living in the city centre.

The firm was also responsible for creating a new Sunderland College-operated Housing Innovation and Construction Skills Academy at Sheepfolds to train people to erect new factory-built homes known as Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) buildings - the first of which would be assembled at the Riverside Sunderland site.

It is not yet clear what the news means for the projects in Sunderland.