Essential building work at the historic Lews Castle in Stornoway is expected to stop following the collapse of a construction firm.
A number of small businesses have been badly hit by losses at Northern Ireland construction firm Patton Group, which went into administration.
The firm had a £2 million contract, funded by Western Isles Council, Historic Scotland and the Heritage Lottery Fund, to carry out a programme of repairs at the crumbling Victoria-era castle which is due to be turned into a hotel and cultural centre.
However, following the appointment of an administrator, Patton now owes its local partner, Neil Mackay & Co, the main contractor on the project, around £360,000.
Mr Mackay said the announcement of administration give some certainty at least to the long running concerns about the firm.
He now faces making half his workforce redundant with some 20 staff at risk of losing their jobs.
A meeting of sub-contractors and council representatives is due to be held tomorrow to discuss a way forward without Patton.
Western Isles Council needs to complete the £2m repair work to make the castle wind and weather tight before it can proceed on to its £9m overhaul.
Patton is one of the consortium firms – which includes Farrans and H&J Martin – which undertook the £70m building of six new Western Isles schools.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article