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Firms who have been sub-contracted to work on Stoke-on-Trent's newest hotel and apartment block say they have been left in limbo following the collapse of construction company Pochin.

Earlier this week, BusinessLive reported how the Middlewich-based firm had been put into administration - leaving 120 jobs at risk.

Now North Staffordshire businesses - which have been sub-contracted to carry out £9 million worth of work on the new Hilton Hotel and apartment block in Hanley- are still waiting to learn what Pochin's collapse means for them.

Genr8 - the developer behind the project - hopes to retain the services of the majority of its existing staff and sub-contractors, but it is not yet known when construction will resume.

Stoke-on-Trent based Reliant Ceilings & Partitions Ltd was installing ceilings at both the hotel and the apartments.

Accounts manager Barry Greenwell told StokeonTrentLive: "We don’t know anything at the moment, we’re just waiting to have a meeting. The first we heard something was wrong was Monday. We were working on both of the schemes.

“The council has said that they will be completing the schemes so we are hopeful that we will be able to complete the work. But until we heard from someone we don’t know for sure what’s going to happen.”

Phil Hulme, who was installing sprinklers in the apartment block for sub-contractor JPR, has not even been able to retrieve his tools from the building site.