Forums Forums National News B&Q to close stores

Home improvement giant B & Q announce store closures plan.

HOME improvement chain B&Q is to close as many as 60 stores over the next two years as part of a restructuring of its UK and Ireland business.

Parent company Kingfisher, which also owns Screwfix, plans to axe about 15% of surplus space as a result of the review of its 360-strong B&Q estate.


The move was announced as it posted a 7.5% drop in annual profits to £675 million after sales fell by 1.4% to £11 billion in the year to January 31.

There is a B&Q store in Bidston Moss, but it is not known at this stage whether it is among those facing the axe.

Kingfisher, which also trades in France through Castorama and Brico Depot, has already agreed to sell a controlling stake in its loss-making China business as it looks to focus on its core European market.

Chief executive Veronique Laury, who took over from Sir Ian Cheshire in December, said the closure plan was one of a number of "sharp" decisions being taken by the FTSE 100 company.

She added: "Home improvement is a great market with huge potential and Kingfisher has a strong position within it with further scope to grow in a sustainable way. However, it is clear to me that we need to organise ourselves very differently to unlock our potential."

Other plans include cutting back on some of the 393,000 products sold across the company, particularly as only 7,000 - amounting to 7% of sales - are currently sold in at least two of Kingfisher's operating companies.

The company will also look to optimise vacant store space and is in discussions with several retailers about sub-letting opportunities.

Kingfisher said the impact on jobs from the B&Q store closure plan will be broadly neutral as it is opening about 60 outlets under the Screwfix brand, while it will also look to redeploy positions to other parts of the business.

Ms Laury denied that the UK DIY market was in decline and said the store closure plan reflected a desire to reinvigorate the company's UK offer. She added that it had long been clear that B&Q had too many stores in its estate.

I can't see how the impact on jobs will be largely neutral when yu consider how many are employed at each B&Q compared with each Screwfix store.

The new occupiers at J1 will be gutted if their anchor tenant disappears.

Can't see it though.

Car park usually packed and prices high so cant understand where they are going wrong. Or is it a case of just not making ENOUGH profit

My guess would be that the big warehouse stores such as Bidston and Chester will be safe, leaving the smaller ones at risk. Our nearest B&Q is at Ellesmere Port, it's much smaller than Bidston and is rarely busy when we go.

Never understood people buying from B&Q or Screwfix for that matter as there are cheaper places to shop at!

Try shopping at Howells diy, now that's extortionate pricing.

The concept of a one-stop shop is simple, save fuel travelling to other stores. There may well be cheaper and even possibly better stores but the price variation isn't that great in my humble opinion and no one is forced to either buy more than they need or even visit the store in the first place. Regarding closures, I believe I read that the intention was to consider down sizing some stores. In which case any of the local venues could be in peril.

Correct but the smaller stores ie: rightway only have limited stock, take the paint for example, if looking for a particular brand they won't have it in stock.
This is where b&q comes into it.
Closing those stores down is a no go.
They will be missed.

i hear from a B&Q employee that the ones you said will be fine will be, the EP one is questionable but the stores they close will be possibly transformed into screwfixes which is more for trade which is where they actually make more of their money, but screwfix has a lot less staff than B&Q... however the bulk of the staff will be re-located i believe, not sure whether that'll be the management or the shop-floor staff.