Boots to shut 300 UK stores putting many in Essex at risk

Boots ^[1] has announced plans to shut 300 branches across the UK within a year, putting numerous Essex stores at risk. The retail ^[2] giant's US owners will close the stores over the next 12 months, with four having already been axed since the start of 2023.

The move will reduce the chain's portfolio from around 2,200 to just 1,900. The exact locations of sites earmarked for the chop have not been made clear by Walgreens Boots Alliance. The closures come despite Boots posting strong quarterly results with retail sales up 13.4% and a ninth consecutive quarter of market share growth.

The chain has dozens of stores across Essex including Southend, Basildon, Brentwood, Chelmsford, Braintree and Colchester. CFO James Kehoe specified the closure figure on a Q3 earnings analyst call on Tuesday afternoon. In the quarterly results report, the company said: "Over the next year Boots will continue to consolidate a number of stores in close proximity to each other.

"Evolving the store estate in this way allows Boots to concentrate its team members where they are needed and focus investment more acutely in individual stores with the ambition of consistently delivering an excellent and reliable service in a fresh and up to date environment."

Boots employs over 52,000 people, but the closures are not expected to lead to redundancies and affected employees will be offered redeployment, a WBA spokeswoman confirmed to the Mirror. Asked which locations are due to close, we were told: "I'm afraid we don't have the detail to share at the moment."

Mr Kehoe told analysts: "We will continue to optimise our locations and opening hours, and expect to close an additional 300 locations in the UK and 150 locations in the US." Stores at Salford Shopping Centre in Greater Manchester, Church Street, Malvern, The Port Arcades Shopping Centre, Ellesmere, and King William Street, London, have all already closed since the spring.

Boots said, following the planned closures, in most cases there will be an alternative store less than three miles away. Starting in 2019, the retailer closed over 200 stores over an 18-month period - with many within walking distance of each other.

And in 2020, it announced 48 opticians were closing, resulting in 4,000 job losses. The Covid pandemic and cost of living crisis, which has resulted in soaring inflation, has hit the high street hard.

WBA said: "This is by no means Boots coming away from the High Street. It is essentially about removing overlapping stores." It added that 85% of closing stores are within 5km of one another, with 82% of people within the UK remaining within a 10-minute drive of a Boots store after the closure.

In a statement, the firm said: "The successful Boots transformation plan has created a strong and stable platform for growth and will accelerate further, including ongoing investment into the rejuvenation of the store estate. In addition to uplifting existing stores, over the next year Boots will continue to consolidate a number of stores in close proximity to each other.

References

^{^} Boots (www.mirror.co.uk)
^{^} retail (shopping.mirror.co.uk)
^{^} The Mirror reports (www.mirror.co.uk)
^{^} The latest business news from Essex (www.business-live.co.uk)