Heritage UK department store operator, John Lewis, has announced the closure of eight stores across the UK, as high street retailer Boots revealed plans to shutter 48 Boots Opticians.
Historically one of the largest retailers in the UK and Ireland, Boots, founded in 1849 in Nottingham, was taken over by Walgreens six years ago to become Walgreens Boots Alliance. With around 2,500 stores in total, ranging from local pharmacies to large health and beauty shops, it employs around 56,000 people in the UK and 1,900 in Ireland.
Walgreens Boots Alliance said it was consulting on plans to restructure its head office and store teams alongside the 48 optician store closures, which would likely shed some 4,000 jobs.
Boots UK's managing director, Sebastian James, said the cuts represented 'decisive actions to accelerate our transformation plan'.
John Lewis, also a heritage brand dating back to 1864, has been struggling with its profitability in recent years and announced that department stores at Grand Central Birmingham and Intu Watford would not reopen following the pandemic. John Lewis' landlord at the latter site entered administration last week.
Other planned closures include its At Home stores in Croydon, Newbury, Swindon and Tamworth, plus smaller units at Heathrow Airport and London St Pancras.
The department store operator warned in 2018 that its profits, including its grocery brand Waitrose, had fallen 99% in the six months to 28 July due to retail headwinds.
On 24 March this year, it temporarily closed all its stores due to the coronavirus pandemic, and announced that plans to invest £500 mln (€558 mln) in its portfolio across 2020 were being reviewed.
The latest announcements come 24 hours after UK chancellor Rishi Sunak unveiled new measures to save UK jobs and announced stamp duty reform.
While the employment measures include one-off payments of £1,000 to employers that retain furloughed staff members to the end of January 2021, the stamp duty cuts raise the threshold of the homebuyer tax to £500,000 for a temporary period.
