John Lewis to permanently close its Chester store

The John Lewis Partnership has revealed plans to permanently close eight stores including it’s ‘At Home’ store on the Greyhound Retail Park In Chester.

The move puts 86 jobs are at risk at the Chester store, John Lewis has said it will enter into consultation with the “affected Partners.”

In a statement the John Lewis Partners said: “Should we proceed, we will make every effort to find alternative roles in the Partnership for as many Partners as possible.”

“At the Partnership’s full year results earlier this month, we said that we will reshape our business in response to how our customers increasingly want to shop in-store and online. ”

“This follows substantial research to identify and cater for new customer shopping habits in different parts of the country.”

“As part of this, we can unfortunately no longer profitably sustain a large John Lewis store in some locations where we do not have enough customers, which is resulting in the proposed closures. The eight shops were financially challenged prior to the pandemic.”

“Given the significant shift to online shopping in recent years – and our belief that this trend will not materially reverse – we do not think the performance of these eight stores can be substantially improved.”

Those to be shut down permanently were listed as: Ashford, Basingstoke, Chester, Tunbridge Wells, Aberdeen, Peterborough, Sheffield and York.