Debenhams in Eltham to shut
Debenham’s have announced they are shutting their Eltham store in January. It follows an announcement today that profits have dropped 44%.
Sales across the High Street in the UK showed the worst performance since 2009. Consumer spending has been propped up by consumer borrowing running at an annual rate of 10% in recent years which was never sustainable.
It’s a big blow to Eltham High Street. I’ve recently covered how poor town centre management appears to be in Woolwich and Plumstead whilst Greenwich Council have been able to find £309,390 to hire a project manager for their Creative District plans at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich.
Is Eltham similarly poorly managed? Would stronger management have seen Debenham’s stay? Probably not, though stronger lobbying and promotion of forthcoming changes in the town may possibly have helped.
But then again those forthcoming changes envisaged under a recently adopted masterplan may go nowhere. When the first proposed housing development recently arrived before Greenwich planners they threw it out.
You can help support the running of the site at Patreon.com/TheMurkyDepths
Debenhams seems to be directionless and in this particular location right next to M&S, suffers in comparison. Eltham is not somewhere that I normally visited, but personal circumstances took me there on several occasions recently.
Debenhams’s leaving Eltham High Street. What a blow to the High Street. . Just has the area is being improved and a new cinema to open in the near future which hopefully would attract more people to the area.
I think part of the problem with our High Streets is a lot of the shops are closed by 17.30 or 18.00 hours while most of us are still travelling home from work, A lot of stores also do not open on a Sunday.
I think the Town Centre Management Teams should be working more closely with businesses on the High Street and in our Town Centres to encourage then to stay open until at least 20.00 during the week so people can shop after work or on their way home.
Because a lot of the stores tend to keep office hours so to speak a lot of people turn to buying on line rather than visiting the shops.
I for one I am really sorry to see another High Street store go. Debenhams will leave a big gap on Eltham High Street.
Spot on.. plus just have a look at demography of the area 70+% of high street “shoppers” are single mums and people on benefits, tell me how you want to squeeze a revenue out of them
Pingback: Eltham’s future Vue cinema construction pushing forward – From The Murky Depths