MORE than 50 people have been made redundant in Darlington through the administration of a rail maintenance firm, it emerged last night.

The workers, based in Darlington’s Park Lane, were told last week they would lose their jobs with immediate effect after their York-based parent company Jarvis went into administration.

It comes as part of the 1,200 redundancies announced by administrator Deloitte, which has already seen at least 300 job losses and potential redundancies at Jarvis sites in York and Newcastle. Last night, one redundant worker at the Park Lane depot told The Northern Echo of the devastation at the job loss announcement and how quickly the redundancies were made.

He said: “One minute we had a job, the next we didn’t.

Everyone is devastated. There are some people there who have got more than 40 years service, and then others with young families and mortgages.

“We’ll all be in financial trouble now, just when we thought things were picking up and we were through the worst of the recession.”

Jarvis, which came close to collapse six years ago, went into administration two weeks ago after seeing a “very considerable reduction in business” since the onset of the recession, with a huge plunge in its levels of rail and plant work.

The group – once the UK’s biggest construction company – warned of heavy losses in February when it said it was being hit by spending delays at Network Rail, which has cut its track renewal programme by 30 per cent.

Deloitte, which has appointed Neville Kahn, Nick Edwards, Phil Bowers and Ian Brown as joint receivers, said it was forced to make the redundancies because it was not possible for Jarvis to continue to trade without new funding being found to finance the business. It acknowledged the redundancy process is painful but necessary.

Only the facilities management arm, Jarvis Accommodation Services Limited, is unaffected by its administration, which has crippled Jarvis’ three other divisions.

However, Deloitte said it was encouraged by the level of interest expressed in Jarvis, adding that it remained hopeful a potential buyer may be found.

Jarvis previously came close to collapse in 2004 after racking up huge debts on over-ambitious bids for Private Finance Initiative contracts.