A BARGAIN shoe retailer with 300 stores is closing a branch in weeks and shoppers "can't believe another one" is shutting. The Shoe Zone store in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, is set to welcome in customers for the final time this Spring. A staff member from the store told The Sun it would permanently close "some time after February". Shoppers have been left gutted after finding out the shop will pull down its shutters for the final time.

Posting on Facebook, one said: "Can't believe another one.". A second added: "So sad for the high street.". Meanwhile, a third added "not going to have any shops left in Burnham" while a fourth dejected local said "so sad to hear this". The Burnham-on-Sea closure comes after Shoe Zone shuttered a branch in Hull on the weekend. The store in the North Point Shopping Centre was offering customers buy one get one free deals before its last day of trading on Sunday.

In December, Shoe Zone warned it would be forced to close a number of "unviable" stores following the Government's Autumn Budget. However, the bargain shoe retailer, which runs just under 300 UK stores, did not confirm exactly how many shops would close. It said shopper confidence had weakened after the Government said it would hike employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs) and the National Minimum Wage.

Both increases are set to come into force in April, but businesses have cautioned they will be passed onto shoppers in the shape of price rises, job cuts and store closures. In the December update to customers, Shoe Zone said it expected its profit before tax for the financial year ending September 2025 to be around £5million, down from £10million previously. The retailer also said it would not be paying a dividend to shareholders for the financial year ending September.

A dividend is money paid to shareholders who hold stock in a company based on its success. It is not clear if the store closures in Hull and Burnham-on-Sea are included in the list of "unviable" shops Shoe Zone said would close. Shoe Zone has already been closing loss-making stores over the past year, revealing last October 53 had shut with 27 opening - a net loss of 26 - in the year to September 28.

Shoe Zone is just one of the chains that has been struggling on the high street as shoppers turn to online retail. Households' budgets have been hit hard in recent years following surging inflation too, which peaked at 11.1% in October 2022. Inflation is the measure of the price of a basket of goods and services - the higher it is, the less far your wages go. The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) said more than 13,000 high street stores closed permanently in 2024.

The centre’s latest analysis found that 13,479 stores, the equivalent of 37 each day, shut their doors for good over the calendar year - representing a 28% increase on 2023. Of the 13,479 branches, 11,341 were independent while 2,138 stores were shut by larger chains. Andrew Goodacre, chief executive officer of the British Independent Retailers Association (BIRA), said independent stores had been hit particularly hard as they can't massively discount stock and for longer periods, like larger retailers can.

A number of major brands have crashed into administration as shoppers vote with their wallets and purses. Ted Baker, Carpetright, The Body Shop and Homebase all fell into administration in 2024, closing dozens of stores between them. However, not all retailers are shrinking the size of their high street presence. B&M has been expanding and opening stores across the UK, as have discount retailers Lidl and Aldi.

EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline. The Sun's business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors. In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping. Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open.

The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury's hike to employer NICs from April 2025, will cost the retail sector £2.3billion. At the same time, the minimum wage will rise to £12.21 an hour from April, and the minimum wage for people aged 18-20 will rise to £10 an hour, an increase of £1.40. In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.

The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing. Retail parks are increasingly popular with shoppers, who want to be able to get easy, free parking at a time when local councils have hiked parking charges in towns. Many retailers including Next and Marks & Spencer have been shutting stores on the high street and taking bigger stores in better-performing retail parks instead.