Carillion was forced into compulsory liquidation after costly contract delays and a downturn in new business. A failure to secure backing from banks and a string of profit warnings and a first-half loss of more than £1billion brought the UK giant to its knees.

On the last moments of the beleaguered British business, Chairman Philip Green said: “In recent days we have been unable to secure the funding to support our business plan and it is therefore with the deepest regret that we have arrived at this decision.

“This is a very sad day for Carillion, for our colleagues, suppliers and customers that we have been proud to serve over many years.” 

However the 20,000 jobs losses are not the only matter at stake. Carillion is at the top of a food-chain, and there remains a real concern that its collapse could send hundreds of smaller suppliers out of business.

Charles Brook of Poppleton & Appleby licensed insolvency practitioners told Express.co.uk that the collapse of Carillion is likely to cause a lot more than an inconvenience for many schools, colleges and public institutions. Mr Brook even goes so far as to compare the fall of Carillion to the Lehman Brothers collapse that brought the finance sector to its knees in 2008.

Mr Brook said: “As a key construction and building services management company, especially in the public sector, not only will thousands of staff be concerned about their jobs but the knock-on effect to many hundreds of smaller suppliers is likely to be significant.

“For the UK commercial construction and facilities management sector, this could prove to be the #LehmanBrothersmoment.”

Marcus Franck, co-founder at Smart Renewable Heat who works with property developers and builders on major projects says that, poor management is at the heart of Carillion’s collapse but the full effects of its downfall will be felt by those further down of food chain.

Mr Franck said: “From a construction industry perspective, this will be frightening for the smaller partners and suppliers that bank on the Carillion relationship. In the long-term, the collapse could have far-reaching consequences for those local businesses and contractors.”

The Federation of Small Businesses has warned that many small UK businesses could be dragged down by Carillion’s failure.

FSB national chairman Mike Cherry has released at statement claiming that Carillion made its suppliers wait four months before paying their bills.

Mr Cherry, said: “It is vital that Carillion’s small business suppliers are paid what they are owed, or some of those firms could themselves be put in jeopardy, putting even more jobs at risk besides those of Carillion’s own employees.

“These unpaid bills may well go back several months. I wrote to Carillion back in July last year to express concern after hearing from FSB members that the company was making small suppliers wait 120 days to be paid.

Mr Cherry says there is a lesson to learnt from all this. He said:” When the dust settles on this sorry saga, there is also a wider lesson to learn about the concentration of public contracts in the hands of a small number of very big businesses. Public procurement must be much more small-business friendly, in which it is easier for small firms to navigate the system and the Government should prioritise meeting its target of at least one third of taxpayer-funded contracts going to smaller firms.”

While on the issue of school meals, Oxfordshire County Council has issued a statement, saying it has taken over services provided by Carillion. After putting firefighters are “on standby” to get Oxfordshire’s children fed, the council claims it has been “planning for the possibility of Carillion’s collapse for some time”.

However, there is no news yet on the cleaning and maintenance services at HMP Dartmoor that Carillion won as part of a £200 million government contract.

Worryingly, the jail’s Independent Monitoring Board, as reported in The Herald, said in 2016 that the poor standards of the outsourced prison maintenance contract had “a serious effect on prisoners caused by the long period of staff shortage”, and were thought to be responsible for the, “increasing levels of self-harm.”

Nigel Green, the chief executive and founder of deVere Group says that the real long-term effects of the collapse are the alarm bells for pension savers across the UK as another huge question mark now hangs over the fate of another major pension fund.

Mr Green told Express.co.uk: “This deeply depressing, and now all-too-frequent, turn of events should be a wake-up call to pension savers.

“The Government’s pensions lifeboat, the Pension Protection Fund (PPF), is now to take over payment of pensions for the company’s retirement scheme members. It can be reasonably expected that those members who are not yet drawing their Carillion pension could now experience a drop of at least 10 per cent to their retirement income.

“Whilst the PPF is an important and valuable support, UK final-salary pension schemes have an enormous deficit blackhole, which raises the inevitable question, ‘how many more big hits can the PPF take?’”