Briggs & Forrester Living has emerged as one of the largest trade creditors in the administration of Torsion Construction Limited, with a claim of about £1.3m among £15.7m owed across 521 trade creditors. The figure appears in the contractor's statement of affairs and represents a creditor claim rather than an amount formally admitted by the administrators or a confirmed bad-debt loss for the M&E specialist. Bricks Leicester Propco is listed at about £1.5m, while Spencer Civil Engineering has a claim of £906,890.
Torsion Construction Limited, company number 09483417, entered administration on 29 July 2026, with James Clark and Howard Smith of Interpath appointed as joint administrators. LCM reported on Torsion's financial position when the contractor filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators earlier that month, at which point directors were still seeking additional funding and restructuring options.
Contractor insolvency can leave substantial exposure across subcontractors and suppliers even where live construction projects continue under replacement delivery teams. Photo: London Construction Magazine.
£1.3m Is a Creditor Claim, Not a Confirmed Loss
The distinction around Briggs & Forrester's £1.3m exposure is important. A figure appearing in a statement of affairs records the liability identified at that stage of the insolvency process; it does not establish how much of the claim will ultimately be admitted, whether contractual set-offs or retentions will alter the balance, or what the creditor may actually recover.
Briggs & Forrester Living operates in mechanical and electrical building services and had worked with Torsion on residential projects. Publicly available project information connects Briggs & Forrester businesses with MEP packages on Torsion-led schemes including Flax Place and Sky Gardens in Leeds, although the administrators' public material does not provide a project-by-project breakdown of how the £1.3m creditor balance arose.
| Creditor | Reported claim | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Bricks Leicester Propco | About £1.5m | Creditor claim |
| Briggs & Forrester Living | About £1.3m | Creditor claim |
| Spencer Civil Engineering | £906,890 | Creditor claim |
The wider trade-creditor schedule is considerably larger. The statement of affairs records approximately £15.7m across 521 trade creditors, while total unsecured liabilities are reported at around £20m. The administrators' current assessment is that a distribution to ordinary unsecured creditors is highly unlikely.
Turnover Reached £165m Before Cash Position Deteriorated
Torsion's collapse followed a period of rapid expansion. Its turnover rose from about £56.9m in the year to June 2023 to £117.2m in 2024 and £165.4m in the year ending June 2025. The latest filed accounts still showed pre-tax profit of roughly £814,000, leaving very little margin relative to the scale of contracting activity passing through the business. According to the administrators' account of the company's subsequent deterioration, Torsion moved into loss during its 2026 financial year as project-specific commercial issues, overspends, delays and wider cost pressure reduced the limited buffer available to the contractor. Directors were ultimately seeking around £6m of additional funding to continue trading.
Funding availability also tightened. Torsion had moved from conventional banking support towards invoice-finance arrangements during 2026, while direct-payment mechanisms were being used on several projects so clients or funders could pay parts of the supply chain directly. Those arrangements could preserve labour and materials on individual sites, but they also reduced the cash flowing through the main contractor to support its own overheads and wider working-capital requirements. That mechanism was already examined by LCM before the formal appointment of administrators. The July analysis found that Torsion's difficulty was not a simple absence of turnover or work, but the ability to convert a rapidly expanding portfolio into sufficient unrestricted cash to support projects and head-office commitments.
Recoveries Depend on Book Debts and Group Balances
The administration also shows why the headline value of assets in a contractor's books can differ sharply from cash available to creditors. Torsion was owed approximately £11.6m in trade debts and retentions, but the estimated realisable value was around £5m as administrators considered disputed valuations, contractual set-offs and collection risk. A further £15.7m was shown as due to the construction company from related Torsion businesses. The largest of those balances was approximately £12.3m from Torsion Developments, which itself entered receivership in September. The administrators estimated that around £7.5m might ultimately be recovered across the intercompany balances, including roughly £6.2m from Torsion Developments, but those figures remain recovery estimates rather than realised cash.
Bibby Financial Services has a secured claim of about £1m, while HMRC is owed approximately £1.4m in a secondary preferential position. Employee-related claims also sit ahead of ordinary unsecured trade creditors to the extent that they qualify for preferential treatment. The resulting position leaves companies such as Briggs & Forrester towards the unsecured end of the insolvency waterfall. That does not establish the M&E contractor's final loss, but it explains why the administrators' assessment of a likely unsecured dividend is more important than the face value of assets appearing in the statement of affairs.
Live Projects Have Moved to Replacement Delivery Teams
Torsion had around a dozen live sites when administrators were appointed and the company ceased trading. Clients and funders have since had to secure sites, assess completed work and establish new delivery arrangements, illustrating the practical consequences that sit behind the creditor figures. At One Victoria in Manchester, replacement contractor AC1 moved from interim mobilisation to a full completion contract after Torsion's previous appointment ended. LCM's project-level analysis of the One Victoria transition found that the scheme was already at an advanced stage, making the handover primarily a matter of completing remaining works, commissioning, inspections and project records rather than restarting the structure.
Similar transitions are required elsewhere in the portfolio, with replacement contractors or revised delivery arrangements needed where clients choose to continue schemes. For incoming teams, the commercial handover can involve more than agreeing a new price: existing subcontractor accounts, warranties, design responsibility, incomplete inspections, materials ownership and outstanding retentions all have to be established before a clean route to completion is possible. LCM has previously examined these wider consequences in its analysis of site protection and delivery risk after main-contractor insolvency. Torsion provides a current example of the same problem at scale: 521 trade-creditor claims sit behind projects that still need to be completed and handed over.
Torsion Adds to a Wider Contractor Insolvency Problem
The administration also sits within a wider period of financial pressure across UK contracting. LCM's 2026 construction insolvency analysis has tracked how thin margins, project losses, cash conversion and legacy liabilities are continuing to affect contractors despite strong headline pipelines in parts of the market.
Torsion's figures demonstrate the risk particularly clearly. Turnover almost tripled between 2023 and 2025, yet the latest annual pre-tax profit represented only a fraction of one per cent of revenue. When projects moved into overspend and external funding tightened, there was little margin available to absorb the working-capital swing.
For Briggs & Forrester and the other trade creditors, the next financial milestones will come from Interpath's asset realisations, adjudication of creditor claims and recovery of the substantial book and intercompany debts. Until that work progresses, the £1.3m figure remains a creditor claim against Torsion Construction rather than a confirmed final loss for Briggs & Forrester.
Expert Verification & Authorship
Founder & Author, London Construction Magazine | Construction Testing & Investigation Specialist