Top high street chain with 364 stores to ‘speed up store closures’

A high street chain with 364 stores could reportedly shut as many as a quarter of its sites as businesses plot their future following Rachel Reeves’s October Budget.

Fashion store New Look could lose over 90 stores when their leases expire, according to The Times, raising the prospect of hundreds of job losses across its 8,000-strong workforce.

Whilst New Look would likely have closed some stores as it adapts to changing consumer trends, the Chancellor’s announcement of increased national insurance contributions and enhanced national living wage is believed to have accelerated plans.

From April, employers will be charged national insurance at a rate of 15%, up from 13.8%, and the threshold at which they begin to pay the tax has been lowered from £9,100 to £5,000.

Meanwhile, the minimum wage is rising by 6.7% to £12.21 an hour and the retail industry’s business rates bill will go up by £140 million from April.

The closure is just one of many high street stores closing their doors, with Iceland closing stores this weekend and the Body Shop and WHSmiths also having closed stores in recent years.

The Centre for Retail Research forecasts that 17,350 shops will close this year, up from about 13,500 closures last year.

It marks the latest chapter of closures for New Look, who had almost 600 stores in the UK in 2018.

Since then, the retailer has twice restructured its store estate and now trades from 364 outlets, all of which are on relatively short leases that link rents to store turnover.

A New Look spokesperson said: “Our store estate is an important part of our business, alongside our best-in-class website and app.

“On occasion we do have to close stores, either due to the landlord’s request or because the site becomes unviable.

“However, we remain on the lookout for appropriate new opportunities across the country and continue to invest in our existing store estate.”

In the year ending March 2024, the company reported a pre-tax loss of £3.7 million on sales of £735.4 million.