DEVASTATED employees have been left in a desperate situation after being laid off without notice.

Staff from Castle Print, which has branches in Richmond and Thirsk, were shocked when company director and owner John Hutchinson announced on January 19 that their jobs no longer existed.

To add to their misery, they then discovered that their pension contributions had not been paid for a year.

The business was started by Alan Starvis and John Renton in 1970 and was bought by Mr Hutchinson in 2002. It printed, among other things, Ordnance Survey maps.

In 2005, it boasted that it had quadrupled its turnover to £1m and predicted this would double by 2009.

The Darlington & Stockton Times was unable to contact Mr Hutchinson. The receivers, the P&A Partnership, had no comment.

An employee said: “The employees walked in and found out there and then it had gone. There was no warning from the director to the staff at all.

“We have been told the bank pulled the plug but I heard from the company that dealt with the receivership that it was the director who chose not to go on because there was no money to pay wages and staff.”

She said staff had not been paid and were having to claim their wages and the missing pension contributions from the receiver.

“Neither contribution [from employee or employer] has been going in for the past year,” she said. “We are going to have to try to claim them back from the receivers or take legal action. We thought they were going in. We found out from someone who said payments had possibly not been going over. When we all checked, it came to light.

“It was devastating for everybody. I think it’s worse because we don’t really know the true story and we have had no warning. We have all been left in a pretty desperate position.

“We have never had any chance to talk to anybody about it. There’s a lot of rumours going around and it’s a bit unclear as to what went wrong.”

Coun Stuart Parsons, who represents Richmond on the county council, said the company had no shortage of clients as staff were working double shifts to meet demands, but it got into financial strife after clients did not pay, or paid late.

He said the company’s downfall was a “massive loss”

and he was sad for those who had lost their jobs.

“I’m terribly sad to hear it’s gone,” he said. “It was a fantastic business. They had invested very heavily in up-todate machinery and people and cwere doing work for people throughout the country.

“It’s just a shame that the people who owed them money were also in difficulties and placed them in difficuties.