£52m-turnover firm given 10 days to secure sale or find new investment
South-west housebuilder Devonshire Homes has filed a notice of intention to appoint an administrator in a bid to protect itself from creditors during attempts to rescue itself from financial problems.
The notice provides the Tiverton firm with 10 days to secure a sale or new investment before entering administration.
The housebuilder, which was set up in 1992, generated turnover of £52m in the year to September 2024 and made a pre-tax loss of £137,000.
It built 128 homes in that year and at the time was working on eight sites across Cornwall, Devon and Somerset, with a controlled landbank of more than 1,880 homes.
The auditor’s report to the most recently published accounts published last October warned there was a “material uncertainty related to going concern”, meaning the firm was facing severe challenges which cast doubt on its ability to operate normally.
It said it required “additional funding to support the development of new and existing sites”.
The accounts said Devonshire was relying on successful implication of actions “before the group have sufficient liquidity to meet their day-to-day working capital requirements”.
The actions listed including securing additional equity funding; entering joint venture partnerships with third parties to share costs and risk; refinancing existing sites to improve liquidity and disposing of “non-core” land assets to generate cash.
The report also said the firm was reliant on an anticipated revolving credit facility interest covenant breach in December 2025 being waived by Lloyds Bank. The waiver is subject to the bank being satisfied that the directors have “taken the appropriate actions to rightsize the business and that satisfactory trading performance is achieved”.
Devonshire has been approached for comment.
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