SUPPLIERS and staff have expressed their outrage after the owner of Liverpool department store Lewis’s went into administration on Friday.

Vergo Retail had already announced the closure of its Liverpool store, but planned to continue operating its 18 other stores, which are clustered around Devon, East Anglia and Essex. It employs 942 staff.

Sarah Bell and Steven Muncaster, of insolvency firm MCR, have been appointed as joint administrators.

Ms Bell said: “Unfortunately, the company has endured periods of financial loss.

“It has made efforts, following the recently announced closure of the Lewis’s store in Liverpool, to seek new finance to restructure the business, but has been unsuccessful in finding a going concern solution.”

However, the company has been heavily criticised for the way it has left people out of pocket.

An angry Derek Walsh, head of Omega FM, the Liverpool-based company who had the cleaning service contract at Lewis's, said: “I spoke to David Thompson [Vergo’s owner] face to face three weeks ago and he assured me everything was OK. Yet, on Friday, there are administrators walking round the place in suits. He must have known there were problems.

“We’re only a small company and you just can’t take these types of losses. It’s the third time our company has been caught, though the first two times were before I was involved.”