Not even one month into 2025 and we’re slapped across the face with more shop closures from a retail giant. WHSmith has announced the closure of 17 stores across the UK with Stockton-on-Tees being placed on the North East’s chopping block.
This nationwide closure has a number of detrimental effects from more empty shops on the high street to the contribution to a community’s economic decline. On top of this, the slow fall of a literary retailer delivers a double hit: to both its workers but also to local readers.
A hit on the readers
Picture a city with a vast array of chain bookshops like Waterstones and WHSmith and a varied selection of independent bookshops that are selling the newest releases. Maybe you’re waiting for the next instalment in a series? Or perhaps you’re waiting for a title that that you have long anticipated. Well, the day has finally arrived: release day. You can finally open your brand-new book and read the words that you’ve waited an age for.
But now picture a small town which doesn’t have the luxuries of major chain stores or vast independent bookshops selling brand-new content. Picture a small town with independent second-hand bookshops and charity shops. They’re great, don’t think otherwise, you can get many great books from these places.
They’re don’t sell brand-new titles, however. Not unless someone donates them almost straightaway or within a reasonable timeframe, which has been known to happen. Supermarkets sell new titles but they are few and far between. Enter a store like WHSmith, catering to those who are after brand-new books at the moment of their release. For those who want the books right away, for those who want something new and current in a place that doesn’t have the retail variety of big cities and for those who want to save the high street from death at the hands of the major, online corporations; the WHSmith stores in the small towns are a lifeline. A connection between brand-new publications and those seeking to buy them. The closure of these stores will sever the lifelines and break the connections; forcing people to look elsewhere outside their local community and spend their money outside it as well, a hit on the local economy to ice the cake.
A blow for the workers
Of course, just with every closure of a store, jobs will be lost. While WHSmith has announced plans to open 110 stores in airports, train stations and hospitals, places where they see a higher profit being made, local stores are being closed. Whereas the opening of the new stores is great and will inevitably bring jobs; how does this help the people who don’t live near said airports, train stations or hospitals and who will lose their jobs when the high street shops shut? The loss of jobs and income for workers will lead to a hit on the affected households and families and also have a knock-on on the communities and their local economies.
Why is it that when big business runs into trouble, it is the ordinary staff who make it work that pay the price? Why are local workers being given the cold shoulder so that more money can be poured into stores in travel hubs and hospitals? Of course, it’s all big business at the end of the day and sadly, those staff members who will lose their jobs are expendable in the face of big profits.
A loss of jobs and income for workers. A loss of supply of brand-new titles for people in small towns with no access to anything else selling brand-new. A loss too, of more advanced stationary supplies, not the stuff that is readily available in supermarkets or post offices. That’s what the latest round of WHSmith closures is giving to the communities that are affected. With news that WHSmith are looking at selling the high street arm of the business as well, things look set to get even worse. Past, present and future closures are double hit; a hit to the workers who keep the businesses going and a hit to keen readers. A double whammy that does not help local communities one bit.
