A boss at a troubled building contractor was starting a new venture in the industry a little over a week before his company filed for administration, sending workers home from sites across the county.

Cardy Construction Limited revealed its intent to appoint administrators last month, sending shockwaves through the sector as subcontractors and suppliers faced a battle to recover money due to them.

Nine days earlier, Christopher Gremo, one of its four directors, was named as the owner of a newly incorporated developer, CSL (Littlebourne) Limited.

In another development, it has been revealed his Cardy co-director and father, Stuart Gremo, is the director of another company which has been in administration for four years.

Subcontractors have been left in disarray by the news.

Natalie Miller, a director of Miller Brickwork LLP, a bricklaying firm in Whitstable, stands to lose £47,000 if Cardy Construction goes bust.

Her company worked on the conversion of the former Westbrook House school in Folkestone into more than 100 apartments, a building site being managed by the Canterbury-based contractor.

Her business had been working on the project since October last year and she now has to find the money to pay her 108 staff without payment for the work.

It was the first time her company had decided to work with Cardy since it was founded more than three decades ago.

She does not hold out much hope of getting her money back.

“This is the third time this has happened to us,” she said. “I think we may be one of the biggest losers on this site because we were just a couple of days from finishing and had been working on it since October.

“Now I have got to dig my way out of this.”

She added that there were plumbers and electricians who could be put out of business on the site they were working on.

Cardy Construction’s demise came as a shock to many. It boosted turnover by more than £25 million to £67.6 million in the year to March 2015, helped by contracts with Rolls-Royce, BMW and Johnson and Johnson.

In its latest accounts, it said it had an order book worth £60 million.

However, Cardy Construction Limited is part of the wider Cardy Group Holdings Limited, which has not filed for administration and is clear to continue new business ventures.

Both are run by the same quartet of directors: Stuart Gremo, his son Christopher Gremo, Lee Johnson and Michael Stannard.

“I’m gutted because we worked very hard. Cardy didn’t even tell me themselves..." - Natalie Miller, Miller Brickwork LLP

On July 16, nine days before Cardy Construction filed for administration, Christopher Gremo became the director of a newly-incorporated company, CSL (Littlebourne) Limited, described at Companies House as focused on the “development of building projects”.

The Insolvency Service says the owners, directors and employees of insolvent companies are free to set up new firms to carry out a similar business so long as they are not personally bankrupt or disqualified from doing so, a process known as phoenixing.

One subcontractor, who wished to remain anonymous, said his firm may continue to work with Mr Gremo in his new venture, in the hope of recovering more than £200k owed to his company for jobs carried out as long as 12 months ago.

He said: “As a subby you have got two choices. You either wipe your hands clean and have nothing to do with them or you carry on trading in the hope you will get some money back eventually.

“If you wipe your hands clean you write the debt off. If you carry on working with the company you stand a chance of recouping some of it. That is the industry.”

For Natalie Miller, the idea of closing her company without paying staff, then reopening another business, is out of the question.

She said: “I’m not the type of person to do that. I pay my bricklayers because I don’t buy into that. I could shut tomorrow and not pay them, but I’m not that type of person. I will continue trying to trade.

“I’m gutted because we worked very hard. Cardy didn’t even tell me themselves. The bricklayers were just told to go home because the site managers said it had gone bust. I have not been told formally.

“I can’t believe for all the years I have been in business I decided to work with them,” she said. “We needed the work at the time.”

Cardy Construction was unavailable for comment.