The discount retailer fell into administration this month, putting 12,000 jobs at risk (Picture: Rex)

The former chair of Wilko has defended the multi-million pound dividends paid out to owners in the run-up to the chain’s collapse.

Lisa Wilkinson, granddaughter of founder James Kempsey Wilkinson, worked her way up the company over 20 years and helped oversee it until earlier this year.

The discount retailer fell into administration this month, putting 12,000 jobs at risk.

The founding family have been criticised for continuing to take out dividends even while the firm began to struggle. This has reportedly left a £50 million hole in one of its pension funds.

According to the Mail on Sunday, some £77 million has been paid out in dividends over the past decade, including a £63 million payout in 2015when one side of the family sold their shares to the other.

Some £3 million were said to have been paid out last year despite annual losses of £39.

But Ms Wilkinson insists managers threw ‘everything and everything again at trying to make Wilko a success’.

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In an interview with The Sunday Times, she said: ‘When people are looking at how this happened, they want it to be a single big thing that was seismic, and it wasn’t.

‘It’s a whole load of things that have just added up to a seismic thing over time and which mean we have ended up in the place where we’ve ended up, which is a very sad place.

Asked about the dividends, she added: ‘The board checked, there was sufficient cash, we went through the right governance, the auditors checked it off.

‘Is there a bit of me lying awake at night saying I wish we’d never taken a penny of dividends out? It might have made us survive a couple of months longer.

‘What we have taken out really wouldn’t have made a difference.’

Ms Wilkinson reportedly bought a majority stake in Wilko from her cousin, Karin Swann, when she became chair in 2014.

Nadine Houghton of the GMB Union, who represent the retailer’s staff, said: ‘The business could have thrived under strong market conditions for bargain retailers – but with owners prioritising their own dividends, it has been left to go under.’

PwC, the firm called in to administrate Wilko, initially struggled to find a buyer to take over all 400 of its branches.

According to the Guardian, M2 Capital, an Anglo-Canadian firm specialising in rescuing businesses, has made a last-minute offer for £90 million.

Unless another potential buyer steps in, the business could instead be broken up and sold piecemeal to rivals.

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Karen Wilkinson insists managers ‘tried everything’ to stop the business from falling into administration, putting 12,000 jobs at risk.