Major fashion retailer with more than 350 stores to close shopping centre location in HOURS
A MAJOR fashion retailer with more than 350 stores will close a shopping centre site in hours as locals complain they will be left in a "ghost town".
New Look has confirmed it plans to shut its store in the Carillon Court Shopping Centre, Loughborough.
A sign in the window of the store reads "Thanks for having us. But it's time to say goodbye... this store will be closing on Tuesday 21st January."
New Look joins a list of retailers who have left the shopping centre in recent months.
These include Vision Express, HM Samuel and The Body Shop.
The closures come amid speculation about the centre's future.
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Vision Express recently relocated to a street-facing unit, citing the shopping centre’s “closure” as the reason.
Businesses like Oh Pretty Co, The Repair Shop, and Grape Tree also vacated their spaces after being told their leases would not be renewed.
WHSmith has also said it will leave the shopping centre in 2025, citing the landlord's redevelopment plans.
WHSmith expressed disappointment but stressed that the move was unavoidable.
A spokesperson said in a statement: “We are disappointed to be losing our presence in Loughborough and would like to thank our customers for their support and our colleagues for their commitment during this transition.”
After the closure of New Look was confirmed locals lamented the loss of yet another retailer.
One wrote on Facebook: "Why would anyone want to visit Loughborough, we have hardly any shops left worth visiting in the town centre."
Another added: "It's becoming a ghost town."
There is speculation the shopping centre could be converted into student flats, but no official statement has been made.
In response to mounting speculation, local authority Charnwood Borough Council has called for clarity from the site’s owners.
The closure of the New Look site is thought to be in line with those of other retailers that have left the centre and not linked to plans for wider closures from the group.
However, earlier this month the fashion retailer also confirmed it would pull down the curtains on its Wickford site in a matter of weeks.
The Essex store will welcome in customers for the final time on January 24.
And, while no decision has been made New Look bosses have suggested the business will ramp up a store closures programme ahead of April's National Insurance hike.
Approximately a quarter of the retailer's 364 stores are at risk when their leases expire, according to The Times.
The company has restructured its store estate twice in the past six years, reducing its portfolio from around 600 UK stores in 2018.
The high street has had a tough few years and just today retailer Quiz said it could close as many as a third of its stores.
CLOSURE CHAOS
Plenty of other retailers are closing stores across the country's high streets as households lean towards online shopping.
Businesses have also been impacted by high business rates and cost pressures and are anticipating a dramatic increase in employment costs from April.
Soaring inflation in recent years has also dented shoppers' pockets.
The Centre for Retail Research's latest analysis suggests 13,479 stores, the equivalent of 37 each day, shut for good in 2024.
Fashion chain Monki, owned by H&M, has announced it will close all of its high street stores with one in Arndale, Manchester having shut yesterday.
The Body Shop is pulling down the shutters on five branches on January 15 in Exeter, Plymouth, Horsham, Norwich and Sheffield.
Three other branches have already closed in Cambridge and Hove.
Stationer WHSmith is closing a branch in Bournemouth on January 15.
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The Entertainer, which has 160 branches across the UK, has also confirmed it will permanently shutter its branch in Croydon's Whitgift shopping centre.
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The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury's hike to employer NICs will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
Research by the British Chambers of Commerce shows that more than half of companies plan to raise prices by early April.
A survey of more than 4,800 firms found that 55% expect prices to increase in the next three months, up from 39% in a similar poll conducted in the latter half of 2024.
Three-quarters of companies cited the cost of employing people as their primary financial pressure.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year.
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: "The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025."
Professor Bamfield has also warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector.
"By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer's household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020."
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