It is understood Spanish infrastructure giant Ferrovial has appointed advisers to find buyers for the utilities and environmental services divisions.

According to Sky News, auctions of the two units, which account for around a third of the 17,000-strong workforce, could get under way shortly.

Account PricewaterhouseCoopers has been teed-up to handle the two disposals, which would boost the chances of the remaining profitable Amey businesses being retained.

Ferrovial first revealed it planned to sell the entire Amey business more than a year ago after the business suffered massive losses on its Birmingham highways contract.

But this suffered a setback when Ferrovial revealed it had slashed the value of Amey by £660m to a “fair value” of £88m in the UK.

Soon after Amey posted a pre-tax loss of £428m for the year to December 31 2018.

The firm’s books were blown apart by a string of exceptional items including another £123m on the disastrous Birmingham City Council Highways PFI contract and a £314m write down on the waste collection and utilities businesses.

Group revenue increased to £2.32bn from £2.2bn last time and results showed Amey UK managed to return a pre-tax profit of £208,000 before exceptional items.

The highways, utilties and environmental divisions all suffered losses before exceptional items during the year with consulting and rail and facilties management, justice and defence posting profits.