Former Austin-Smith Lord employees in Abu Dhabi have taken out 14 injunctions under Emirati law in a bid to recover money they are owed.

But the move has sparked fears among their former UK colleagues that it could jeopardise their own chances of being paid.

The injunctions require Adach – the client whose delayed payments forced the practice to make half its staff redundant – to set aside about £550,000.

This is likely to divert money from the company voluntary agreement (CVA) into which Adach is paying the money it owes the architect. Funds in the CVA will be distributed to an agreed list of creditors.

BD understands subconsultants in Abu Dhabi are considering a similar course of action. If successful this could greatly increase the amount diverted from the CVA.

Before taking out the emergency injunctions, the ex-staffers in Abu Dhabi said they issued Austin-Smith Lord with a legal notice stating their dismissal was unlawful and warning they would take legal action if there was no response within 24 hours. They say the practice did not respond.

Ex-staff in the UK are concerned the action will affect their own claims which are dependent on Adach paying its debt in full. Even then they will only receive 85p in the pound.

In a document seen by BD, an Abu Dhabi ex-staffer wrote: “All of us here were aware of the effect the injunctions would have on our ex-colleagues at Austin-Smith Lord, but we had no choice other than being left here stranded with rentals, school fees, repatriation costs etc unpaid.”

Austin-Smith Lord partner Neil Chapman said: “I’ve not seen details of the injunction but there is no question of them being left stranded. In order to secure the best result for everybody we had to go into in CVA.”