Evesham Technology redundancy claims outstanding

Ex-staff play waiting game

By Kelly Fiveash • Get more from this author

Posted in PC Builder, 13th March 2008 13:26 GMT

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Many Evesham Technology Ltd workers who lost their jobs when the British computer maker fell into administration last August appear to still be waiting for their redundancy claims to be fully realised.

According to an administrator’s report filed with Companies House late last month: “A significant number of redundancies were made and the claims are being dealt with by the Redundancy Payments Office.”

However, joint administrator Andrew Poxon said that DTE Leonard Curtis, which has been overseeing Evesham Technology’s administration proceedings since the Worcestershire-based firm’s demise last summer, hasn’t yet received the final wages, holiday pay and redundancy claims.

Ex-employees of Evesham Technology are the only remaining preferential creditors whose payments remain outstanding, according to the report.

As we reported last October, Evesham Technology, which had been one of the last remaining indigenous computer maker's still operating in a very competitive market, went bust owing creditors nearly £7m.

At the time DTE noted that unsecured creditors would receive nothing because no "surplus funds" were available.

The latest administrator's report also said that a condition of the sale contract relating to Evesham Technology assets was to ensure that the firm would continue to provide “certain labour services,” to allow the firm to fulfil warranty and other claims from its customers.

“In order to deal with potential claims complete departments such as customer services and engineering were retained in order that these functions could be made available to purchasers," it said.

“A secondment agreement was entered into to provide the services of these departments to the purchasers. The provision of these services was terminated on 4 Janaury 2008.”

Meanwhile, a number of key Ex-Evesham Technology employees have been scooped up by European Electronique.

The Oxfordshire-based reseller said that Garry Street joined the firm in January as technical services manager. It has also hired six other “highly skilled staff from the engineering, support and sales departments of Evesham Technology”.

Street will oversee a number of contracts, including a £2.5m per year Oxfordshire County Council project that European Electronique acquired from Evesham Technology last year.

It's also picked up support and maintenance contract remanants left over from the Home Computing Initiative (HCI) scheme, in which ex-Evesham Technology boss Richard Austin had invested heavily.

He later blamed the government's decision to scrap the HCI scheme that had offered tax breaks for employees allowing them to hire purchase PCs through their pay packets, for the company's financial woes. ®

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