Losses at building services and FM specialist Integral UK deepened last year to £32m, marking the fifth consecutive year in the red for the specialist contractor.

These problems prompted a £3m round of redundancies last year and saw Integral’s US property investor owner Jones Lang LaSalle inject £15m into the business last March to strengthen its balance sheet.

Turnover remained stable at the business rising 3% to £362m.

The firm’s problems stemmed from a £7m loss on a small number of high-value legacy construction contracts last year, £3m of restructuring costs and a near £10m writedown against software assets that will no longer be used as the firm switches to JLL reporting structures and processes.

New chief financial officer Peter Harris said 2023 was challenging but transitional year for Integral.

He said: “From a cost perspective price-inflation experienced in the UK continued to affect the profitability of long-term facilities maintenance and construction contracts.

“During 2023, the management team continued to focus on mitigating the impacts of the macro-economic challenges on the Integral business.”

Harris said that the firm has made progress on reducing and closing out exposures on long-term construction contracts that impacted profitability in the current and preceding years.

Legacy construction contracts would complete this year creating a more favourable outlook for the future profitability of the construction projects division, he said.

Integral also rationalised certain multi-year engineering contracts in order to drive profitability in future years, with notable improvements expected to be seen this year.

Harris added: “These turnaround programmes, amongst other ongoing actions taken are unquestionably expected to benefit the financial performance of the business going forward.

“Unfortunately, as part of such business restructuring it has been necessary to make staff redundancies in the year.”

Headcount at Integral fell 12% over the year to just below 2,ooo staff.