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A further 9,100 Wilko employees will be made redundant by early October, administrators have said.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) failed to reach a deal to save any significant part of the retailer after it collapsed into administration last month.
“It is anticipated that all stores will be closed by early October, resulting in the redundancies of a further 9,100 employees in those stores,” PwC said.
It comes after Sky News revealed a rescue deal involving the owner of HMV had collapsed.
PwC previously announced around 1,600 redundancies at Wilko and confirmed that 52 stores would shut this week after it failed to find a buyer for them.
Read more: Full list of Wilko stores set to close in the coming days
The administrators said in their statement on Monday: “Staff at 124 stores have today been informed that those outlets will close on, or before, Thursday 21 September.
“Timings for the closure of the remaining 222 stores will be announced in due course.”
Earlier, Sky News reported 400 branches of the collapsed retailer would close by early October with the “likely” loss of all 12,500 jobs at the chain, according to the GMB union.
GMB boss Gary Smith told Sky News’ Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge that Wilko would cost the taxpayer “tens and tens of millions of pounds” – and that a quarter of the Wilko workers won’t get redundancy pay.
He added the law prioritises creditors over job protection, which has led to this situation.
Mr Smith claimed that due to the lack of proper consultation and the resulting redundancies “the taxpayer is going to pick up the bill” for costs related to redundancy payments, failure to…
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