The construction arm of the Clegg Group managed to lift revenue by just over a third to £72m but suffered a £3.1m loss due to unavoidable pressures on the cost of delivering some existing fixed-price contracts secured in earlier years.

In latest published results, the now employee-owned firm said inflation on the cost of materials and labour was also aggravated by supply-chain failures on some contracts, and general limitations to the production capacity of the subcontract market due to high levels of trading across the industry.

It said more predictable trading conditions have now returned which allowed negotiation and tendering of new work to be secured and delivered profitably this year.

Clegg said the general contracting market remained buoyant for new enquiries helping itr to build a strong order book of existing and secured work from defence, education, leisure, accommodation and healthcare sectors trading through 2024 and into 2025.

The overall Clegg Group performance was better after a record year from specialist contracting arm Clegg Food Projects. This specialist operation for the food and drink manufacturing sector returned a £5.6m pre-tax profit compared to £1.4m in the prior year on revenue nearly doubled at £78m.

This allowed the Clegg Group to record revenue up to £165m, generating a pre-tax profit of £1.5m, just slightly down from £1.8m previously.