FORMER high profile butchery chain Gerald David and Family had debts of more than £1.68 million when it collapsed with the loss of dozens of jobs in October.

The business, based in Somerset and Devon, had a total of nine outlets, including two shops in Minehead and one in Dulverton, as well as an abattoir in Porlock.

The West Somerset outlets closed and the only three stores to remain open - Cheddar, Newton Abbot and Topsham - have since been bought by Darts Farm for £62,000.

Documents lodged at Companies House reveal the extent of the financial problems of the family-run chain, founded by Mr David and his wife Jenny more than 40 years with the first shop in Langport.

More than £820,000 is owed in PAYE and VAT while some of the 80 full and part-time staff previously employed are owed more than £153,000 in unpaid pension contributions and redundancy payments.

But with administrators having only identified assets of around £68,000, it is doubtful whether any of the estimated 100 trade creditors, who are owed at least £294,000 in total, will receive anything.

Apart from the money owed to Revenue and Customs, the debts include more than £253,000 to Lloyds Bank and £38,000 to EDF Energy.

Withycombe pig farmer Stephen Crossman is owed £11,000, Somerset auctioneer Greenslade Taylor Hunt which runs Sedgemoor Livestock Centre £91,000 and Ludlow auctioneer McCartneys more than £125,000.

The Davids' cheese supplier Hawkridge Farmhouse Dairy in Crediton is £21,000 out of pocket and poultry supplier Creedy Carver, also in Devon, more than £18,000.

Details of the business's affairs also show that Mr and Mrs David borrowed just over £364,000 on the business through a directors' loan account but there is no indication of how much of that may be available to creditors.

At the time the business went into administration, Mrs David told the Free Press from the couple's home in Spain that the economic situation, difficult trading times and competition from supermarkets had taken its toll.

Just over a year ago Gerald David and Family Ltd was fined a total of £3,000 and ordered to pay £12,000 in costs after pleading guilty to six counts of misleading labelling and advertising in a prosecution brought by Somerset Trading Standards.

The charges arose from claims appearing on the company's website, in its stores in Dulverton and Taunton and in a parish magazine that its lamb came from Exmoor and its beef from Devon when it had actually been sourced more than 100 miles away in the Midlands.

Mr David stepped back from running the business earlier this year but two of his sons, his daughter, daughter-in-law and grandsons were still involved at the time it collapsed.