Closing down signs appear at the Edinburgh Woollen Mill in Northbrook Street, Newbury

Announcement follows 'closing down sale' at local Peacocks, owned by same company

Closing down signs have appeared at the Edinburgh Woollen Mill branch in Northbrook Street.

The move follows closing down sale signs appearing at Peacocks in the Newbury Kennet Shopping Centre earlier this week, owned by the same company as the Mill.

It is unclear at this stage when the store will shut.

The Edinburgh Woollen Mill group - which operates around 1,100 stores nationwide - announced on October 9 that it had lodged a notice of intention to appoint administrators to look for potential buyers to shore up the struggling business.

That notice was extended for two weeks yesterday (Friday) to give it more time to find new buyers or new investors.

About 50 Edinburgh Woollen Mill and Peacocks stores were closed last week, resulting in 600 job losses.

Up to 100 more branches could be closed imminently, with potentially hundreds of redundancies.

In addition to the Edinburgh Woollen Mill and Peacocks stores, there is a Jaeger concession inside the Camp Hopson store in Northbrook Street.

Pandemic conditions - in particular the local and national lockdowns - have hit the high street business badly.

The company has also been hit hard by allegations, which it denies, that the retailer and several rivals failed to pay some Bangladeshi suppliers during lockdown in an attempt to cut costs for clothes they were unlikely to sell.