Bad day for UK retail continues as Topshop owner Arcadia plans 500 HQ job cuts

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jul 1, 2020

Philip Green's giant fashion group Arcadia is planning to axe 500 jobs at its London head office, 20% of the HQ's total headcount, it said on Wednesday, blaming the coronavirus crisis for the move.

"Due to the impact of Covid-19 on our business, including the closure for over three months of all our stores and head offices, we have today informed staff of the need to restructure our head offices," the company said. It added that the cuts were needed to ensure it could operate as efficiently as possible in "very challenging times".

The news came on the same day that jobs cuts were announced at John Lewis and Harrods and as it emerged that TM Lewin would also close all of its stores. It has been estimated that across the retail and aviation sectors in the UK, 10,000 job cuts have been revealed in just 48 hours.

The cuts at Arcadia, which also owns Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Wallis and Evans, may be a direct result of the pandemic and the lockdown that's only just ending, but Arcadia was struggling even before the crisis. It has been closing stores and cutting jobs for several years and has also exited many international markets as its ambitious global plans were reversed.