Connaught, a social housing fit-out firm listed on the alternative investment market, this week wrote down £8.4m of costs after it quit the commercial sector.

The costs, mainly associated with 950 redundancies made in a restructuring, were higher than first expected, although the City had been warned about the writedowns in a trading update in September.

Connaught has switched focus to two core markets, social housing and health and safety compliance, including gas maintenance, for small and medium-sized enterprises.

After the writedowns are taken into account pre-tax profit rose 30% to £5.8m on turnover that increased 48% to £200m, for the year to 31 August.

Mark Tincknell, the chief executive, said the company was “on the Crest of a wave” in social housing and that there would be good opportunities for organic growth.

Social housing represents 72% of its earnings, and the company is shortlisted for £390m of work. In the past it has won one in three contracts for which it has put in a bid. The company has a record order book of £1.1bn.

This year it bought two gas maintenance businesses in South Wales and a maintenance firm in Scotland for a total of £4.1m.

All three acquisitions were aimed at extending its UK-wide network.

Connaught’s SME business accounts for the remaining 28% of earnings. The firm has benefited from the increased emphasis placed on regulatory requirements and compliance issues.

It increased its total dividend by 5% to 8.1p a share.

Shares dropped 4p to 479p when the results were announced on Tuesday.