John Lewis ‘looks for new office space half the size of current headquarters as thousands of staff work from home’
- The retailer is looking for an office ‘half’ the size of its current 220,000sq ft HQ
- It comes as the company reported an annual loss of £234million last month
John Lewis is looking to slash the size of its London office by half as thousands of its staff now work from home.
The John Lewis Partnership, which also owns Waitrose, has hired property experts Tuckerman to find new offices ‘half’ the size of its current 220,000sq ft headquarters in Victoria, London.
It comes as the retailer reported an annual loss of £234million and warned of job cuts earlier this year, claiming inflation hit the company ‘like a hurricane’.
But the company claimed the downsizing wasn’t a cost-cutting exercise and was a result of more staff working from home after Covid.
A John Lewis spokesman said: ‘We announced last year that we’re moving to a new London office that better suits our needs when our current lease ends next year.
The John Lewis Partnership, which also owns Waitrose, has hired property experts Tuckerman to find new offices ‘half’ the size of its current 220,000sq ft headquarters in Victoria, London (pictured)
‘Like many businesses, we don’t need as much space now we have a blended approach to working in offices, home and out in the business.
‘As our requirements for office space reduce, we also expect to reduce our occupancy costs.’
John Lewis chairman Dame Sharon White, 55, recently said the partnership needed to ‘step up our transformation’ and is seeking to raise £1billion and £2billion of new investment.
Dame Sharon also hired John Lewis’s first ever chief executive, Nish Kankiwala, to help revive the company’s fortunes.
John Lewis has £350million of debt that needs repaying or refinancing within the next two years and it has been struggling to stop losses in the face of inflation.
John Lewis chairman Dame Sharon White (pictured), 55, recently said the partnership needed to ‘step up our transformation’ and is seeking to raise £1billion and £2billion of new investment.
The John Lewis Partnership is the UK’s largest employee-owned business with its retail brands – John Lewis and Waitrose – owned in trust by its 80,000 partners.
It has 34 John Lewis shops plus one outlet and 332 Waitrose shops across the UK, along with its retail websites.
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