The firm founded just seven years ago turned over £28m last year and employed more than 20 staff out of its Manchester Business Park base near the city airport.

Administrators from Leonard Curtis confirmed staff had been now laid off.

Harbur specialised in buying land, obtaining planning permission for schemes and then constructing them in conjunction with the relevant residential provider.

The firm built up skills in remediating brownfield sites in order to deliver affordable housing and commercial developments.

Harbur Construction was on site building a £2.9m 30 apartment scheme at Back Church street in Bolton and was working on several schemes for TAC Development including a £6m housing job of 70-plus units on the site of the Notre Dame School in Everton.

Nearly 42,500 new homes were registered in the UK by NHBC in the first three months of the year.

This represent a 17% jump on last year with both private and social housing showing strong growth.

Private sector homes were up 10% at 31,197 units, while affordable home registration jumped 40% to 11,273 new homes compared to last year.

For the first time in seven years all 12 regions across the UK enjoyed growth in registrations, when compared to the same period 12 months ago.

The North East (+39%), London (+38%) and Eastern (+31%) were among the regions with the most notable growth.

Khan said that “the continuation of the project will expose the London taxpayer to additional financial risk, both with regard to the bridge’s construction and its operation and maintenance.”

The scheme has been on life-support for some time and the latest move looks to kill-off any chances of it being built.

Khan said: “Under the previous Mayor, a considerable amount of London taxpayers’ money has already been spent on the Garden Bridge.

“I have always been clear that not a penny more of taxpayers’ money should be allocated to the project.”Having assessed all the information available to me including the findings of Dame Margaret Hodge’s independent review, my view is that providing Mayoral guarantees will expose the London taxpayer to too much additional financial risk.

“With planning permission due to expire this year, many outstanding issues remain, including spiralling construction costs and doubts around funding the maintenance of the bridge.

“The funding gap is now at over £70m and it appears unlikely that the Trust will succeed in raising the private funds required for the project.

“I am simply not prepared to risk a situation where the taxpayer has to step in and contribute significant additional amounts to ensure the project is completed.”

We understand that pay talks have set the bar at nearly £60,000 a year for full-time builders on the site.

Talks are currently ongoing between main contractor joint venture Bouygues Travaux Publics/Laing O’Rourke and the construction unions.

And the industry’s ongoing skills shortage means the unions are in a strong position.

One source close to the talks said: “This is the biggest construction site in the country and everyone wants to get it built on time.

“The unions know that and any pay deal will be better than the one at Heathrow T5 where everyone made sure people were paid industry leading rates to get the job done.”