POUNDLAND has confirmed the exact date of another high street store closure as it begins shuttering sites.
The budget chain is set to close four stores in May as its owner, Polish retailer Pepco Group, looks to offload the business.
The latest store to confirm a closure date is in Gravesend's St George's Centre.
The site will be shuttered for good on Thursday May 8.
The news of yet another store closure in the Kent town has prompted dismay from locals.
One said: "What a dump Gravesend has become."
Another added: "All the decent shops have gone."
A third added: "The town has lost so many shops and market used to be bustling now dying bit by bit, be a ghost town."
The shopping centre has already seen the closure of an Argos and WHSmith as well as gift shop Don't Panic.
A spokesperson for Poundland said: "It’s correct we’ve sadly decided to close our St George’s centre store on 8 May. Our Imperial retail park store is only around half a mile away and we look forward to continuing to welcome shoppers there.
"We operate from over 800 locations across the UK and Ireland and with so many outlets, it will be no surprise that we constantly review our store portfolio as leases expire or come up for renewal.
"Whenever we decide to close a store, we do all we can to look for other opportunities for colleagues and that work is now underway."
The closure of Poundland's Gravesend site will come less than a week after it pulls down the shutters on sites in London's Clapham Junction railway station and a the Belle Valle shopping centre in Liverpool.
The Clapham Junction site will close on Friday May 2, while the Liverpool branch will be shut from Tuesday May 6.
Poundland is also preparing to close its store in Brackla, Wales, which is going to cease trading on May 24.
Just last month, Poundland was forced to shut its Belfast branch after the Connswater Shopping Centre was placed into receivership.
The store closed its doors at the end of March, following a major closing-down sale.
Back in October, residents of Maidenhead were similarly dismayed when their local Poundland branch closed.
This came in addition to other closures, including its Sutton Coldfield store on October 5 and the Macclesfield branch last August, the latter closing due to the inability to secure a new lease agreement.
It's important to remember that retailers often open and close stores for a variety of reasons, and these decisions don't necessarily reflect financial difficulties.
For instance, a retailer may choose to close a shop if there’s another nearby location that performs better, or they might relocate to a site with higher footfall, such as a busy retail park.
Alternatively, they may decide to shift their focus entirely to online operations.
Therefore, store closures alone are not always a reliable indicator of a business's financial health.
In March, Poundland's parent company, Pepco, enlisted advisory firm Teneo to oversee the potential sale of its UK business.
The decision followed Pepco's announcement that it is exploring "all strategic options" to separate Poundland from its portfolio of brands.
The Polish-based group had hinted that it may shift its focus towards its more profitable operations across Europe.
Pepco previously warned that rising costs, including increases to employer national insurance contributions (NICs) and the national minimum wage, would significantly impact its bottom line.
Late last year, it was revealed that Poundland's profits had plunged by £641million in the year leading up to September.
Executives attributed the decline to sluggish sales and a bleak outlook, compounded by measures introduced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
A spokesperson also said the huge loss was "due to a non-cash impairment at Poundland that relates to the acquisition of the UK chain in 2016".
This essentially means the business's value has dropped due to expectations of reduced future cash flows.
More recently, Poundland reported a 9.3% decline in revenue for the three months ending in December, adding further strain to the troubled retailer.
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."
Do you have a money problem that needs sorting? Get in touch by emailing money-sm@news.co.uk.
Plus, you can join our Facebook group to share your tips and stories
6,000.000+downloads/Free/Bengali/Version2.3.4
777 BDT IPL 2025 Sports First Deposit Bonus
