Scope has become a fixture of many high streets across England and Wales, but change is on the way after it confirmed that a total of 56 sites will be getting the chop soon
A major fixture of Britain’s high streets is set to shut its doors as it continues to announce closures up and down the country. It comes after Claire’s confirmed hundreds of its own shops will be shutting down permanently.
Charity shop Scope has been around for years, helping to raise vital funds for people living with disabilities. But as part of a huge restructure, the high street staple will be closing dozens of its branches.
Currently, Scope operates in both England and Wales, but after 56 shops were announced to be closing, hundreds of its own shops to get the chop. These branches will be closing in just a matter of weeks, vastly impacting local communities.
The charity shop’s branches in both Gillingham’s Twydall Garden and London’s Stamford Hill will close for good on October 18. As a result, this will now bring the total number of closed Scope shops to 58, according to the Sun.
These latest closures follow similar branches shutting their doors, with Alton’s branch closing down in August, while Stortford, Huntingdon and Newmarket, Beverley and Fleet officially closed down in September. The numbers make for dire viewing for the charity as between March and September, over 50 branches were closed.
Scope opted to close the shops down as part of a consultation that it had launched earlier in the year. But for Scope, May was the hardest month as 11 different shops closed across England and Wales by the time May 31 rolled around.
Another ten shut down permanently in June, while one closed in July in a relatively quiet month, before rising to four in total in August. But despite their huge swathe of closures, Scope is not done yet, as another 77 shops it owns could also be sold off and shut down.
Currently, Scope owns 138 premises but this has been dwindling for several months, with the charity’s head of retail Debbie Boylan explaining they were not happy with the volume of closures. However, she insisted the deal had to be done to save the charity itself.
“We never take the decision to close our stores lightly,” she explained. “We recognise that for our colleagues and volunteers, it’s more than just a job.
“We know they feel passionately about playing their part in our work to create an equal future with disabled people,” she continued. “And our decision does not reflect their hard work or dedication to Scope.”
Scope has been gradually reducing the number of stores it owns after the consultation was launched in January as a way to maintain profits due to large declines in footfall. CEO Mark Hodgkinson said at the time that the charity shops have made a “real contribution” to keeping the charity afloat but outside influences had “made trading harder”.
In its most recent report for 2024, Scope had said it had made around £24million thanks to trading, a small increase from the year before. But at the same time, it had also spent some £24.7million, an increase of £1million compared to last year’s figures, meaning the cost of running the charity was making a loss.
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