NEW LOOK has confirmed one of its branches will shut as it gears up to close a “quarter of all shops”.
The fashion retailer will pull down the curtains on the Wickford site in a matter of weeks.
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The Essex store will welcome in customers for the final time on January 24 in a blow for the high street.
A spokesperson for the chain said the branch was closing “at the landlord’s request”.
They added: “We would like to thank all of our colleagues and the local community for their support over the years.
“We hope customers continue to shop with us at our nearby Basildon store, whilst our full product ranges can also be found at newlook.com.”
Read more on Store Closures
It’s not the first New Look branch to close in recent months.
The retailer, which sells women’s clothing, footwear and accessories, permanently closed a branch in Swindon last month.
A string of other sites have shuttered, including in Gillingham, Perth and an outlet store in Leigh.
The worst is yet to come too, with New Look expected to ramp up its store closure programme following the Autumn Budget tax raid.
Roughly a quarter of the retailer’s 364 stores are at risk when their leases expire equating to around 91 sites, The Times reported.
The company has restructured its store estate twice in the past six years, reducing its portfolio from around 600 UK stores in 2018.
The 91 stores remain open for the time being and no final decisions regarding closures have been made.
The move to accelerate store closures is understood to be driven by the forthcoming increase in National Insurance, announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in October.
Employers currently pay NICs for most workers earning more than £9,100 a year.
The sum they pay is equivalent to 13.8% of the employee’s earnings above that threshold.
For an employee earning £30,000, the employer would pay NICs of £2,884.20.
But from April, this tax rate will increase to 15% and the threshold at which companies have to start paying NICs is falling to £5,000.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC), which represents the industry, has warned these changes will cost the sector £2.3billion.
The Centre for Retail Research has also predicted around 17,350 retail sites will close this year.
Of the 17,350 forecast to close, around 14,660 are expected to be smaller, independent retailers.
A host of retailers have warned the upcoming tax raid could force them into raising prices to cover their costs too.
Next has cautioned prices will go up by 1% with it set to tackle a £67million increase in staff costs.
Greggs, Halfords and Sainsbury’s have also said prices may be hiked to account for the rise in employer NICs.
RETAIL SECTOR STRUGGLES
The retail sector’s woes have been ongoing for years, even before the Government’s Autumn Budget.
The Centre for Retail Research has described the industry as going through a “permacrisis” since the 2008 financial crisis.
A number of factors have seen the industry struggling, including the rise of online shopping and lower footfall to stores, the coronavirus pandemic and the increased cost of living for households.
In recent years, a number of major chains have collapsed into administration leading to the closure of hundreds of shops.
This includes Ted Baker, Homebase, Carpetright and discount giant Wilko.
Other retailers have stayed afloat but have decided to downsize their store portfolios, like Boots.
Independent retailers across the UK have been hit particularly hard.
The Centre for Retail Research said 11,341 independent stores shut in 2024, a 45.5% jump from 2023.
But it’s not all been bad news across the sector, with a number of retailers including B&M, Aldi and Lidl announcing in recent years plans to open hundreds of branches between them.
Why are retailers closing shops?
EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline.
The Sun’s business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors.
In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping.
Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open. In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.
The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing.
Retail parks are increasingly popular with shoppers, who want to be able to get easy, free parking at a time when local councils have hiked parking charges in towns.
Many retailers including Next and Marks & Spencer have been shutting stores on the high street and taking bigger stores in better-performing retail parks instead.
Boss Stuart Machin recently said that when it relocated a tired store in Chesterfield to a new big store in a retail park half a mile away, its sales in the area rose by 103 per cent.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Wilko, Debenhams Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Paperchase to name a few.
What’s increasingly common is when a chain goes bust a rival retailer or private equity firm snaps up the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.
They may go on to open a handful of stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely ever as many stores or in the same places.
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