HMV has become one of the first retailers to publicly suspend new store openings across the UK, saying the Budget has made the environment too risky to invest.
Canadian owner Doug Putman said he doesn’t see HMV opening any new stores in 2025 due to the added costs of the Budget, despite having previously targeted between five and ten new openings each year.
The entrepreneur said: “We would love to continue to open stores, but I think obviously with the Budget, there are some worries and some concerns.
“When we look at next year, we’ve got everything on pause so we could end up opening five stores. but I think more than likely we’re not. I think we’re probably getting close to zero”.
Putman went on to rebuke the government for dampening investment in the economy, saying they had not done a good job of “encouraging people to invest more and take more risk”.
“The cost to do it now and the risk that you take for every store has just become much greater,” Putman added. “So that in a lot of cases it’s not worth the risk”.
Putman becomes the latest retail leader to publicly criticise chancellor Rachel Reeves and the Budget, after the British Retail Consortium published a leaked letter this week saying the sector is facing an estimated £7bn in extra costs as a result of the fiscal event.
The letter, signed by nearly 80 retail leaders from across the industry, also warns that the government’s actions at the Budget will “increase inflation, slow pay growth, cause shop closures, and reduce jobs, especially at the entry-level.
“This will impact high streets and customers right across the country,” it adds. “We are already starting to take difficult decisions in our businesses, and this will be true across the whole industry and our supply chain.”
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