Homebase heads for adminstration after £84,000,000 losses with 130 shops at risk of closing

Homebase is set to collapse into administration with 130 shops facing closure, putting countless jobs on the line.

The DIY and garden chain has closed 106 branches since 2018 and reported losses of £84 million last year.

Hilco Capital, which bought the retailer for £1 in 2018, has been trying to balance the books for years. Before being taken over, Homebase had 250 stores and some 11,50 staff.

Losses were blamed on more ‘cautious’ customers amid the cost of living crisis.

In a bid to save some jobs, Sainsbury’s will convert 10 of the Homebase’s 145 stores across the UK and Ireland into supermarkets.

These converted sites are in: Sutton Coldfield, Bromsgrove, Cromer, Derry/Londonderry, Fareham, Inverurie, Lowestoft, Newark, Omagh and Rugby. The deal is expected to create 1,000 jobs.

The move follows reports that Homebase owners are preparing to sell the company – again – with rival retail The Range eyeing Homebase up.

The Range will bag the branches as part of a ‘pre-pack administration’, when businesses going bust sell assets before appointing administrators.

This could save nearly 75 stores and 1,500 jobs but a further 58 stores and 1,700 jobs are in limbo.

Once the formal process has begun, administrators will seek buyers for the remaining branches.

The Range owner Chris Dawson, branded the ‘Del Boy Billionaire’, told The Telegraph: ‘We are delighted to be able to save so many stores and jobs, and look forward to adding the Homebase brand and subsidiaries to the expanding Range group of companies.’

Between years of austerity, a worldwide pandemic and a cost of living crisis, it hasn’t been the best time recently to be a high-street retailer.

As one Metro.co.uk columnist asked in 2013: ‘Is the death of the high street inevitable?’

According to the Centre for Retail Research, 25 businesses have failed this year, affecting 760 stores and nearly 15,400 employees.

The Post Office only today revealed 115 branches may shutter, joining WHSmith, Wetherspoons and Marks and Spencer in closing stores.

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