John Lewis Cutting High Street Costs

John Lewis Cutting High Street Costs

John Lewis Partnership has said it is cutting high street costs and is seeking discounts from landlords as it looks to streamline.

John Lewis told the landlords of some of its properties that it will withhold 20 per cent of this quarter’s service charge.

The department store chain said that the current service charge is too high.

Although, the move could result in legal action being taken by landlords to recover unpaid bills if they don’t agree with the retailer.

Last week, the John Lewis Partnership board was reportedly mulling plans to re shape the business in order to streamline office roles, cut costs by £100 million, and bring its two retail chains closer together.

John Lewis Partnership announced a major restructuring of its management teams earlier this week in a bid to cut £100m a year from its costs. From next year its supermarkets and department store divisions will be run as one business.

“At a time when we are doing everything we can to reduce our cost base, we have unfortunately been faced with regular increases to the service charges we pay for some of our shops in shopping centres,” John Lewis said in a statement.

The statement went on to say,

“Over the last three years, we have seen an increase in service charges of 20 per cent and these continued increases are simply not acceptable, particularly in the absence of strenuous efforts by landlords to work collaboratively with us to reduce these costs. We are investing more in our current shop estate than ever before to do everything we can to encourage customers to grow footfall to our shops and we hope that our landlords will support us in continuing to do this.”

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