A much loved shoe shop with 330 nationwide stores has become the latest store to close in a West Sussex ‘ghost town’.
Shoppers in Burgess Hill spotted a ‘closing down’ sign outside of the Shoezone store in Market Place Shopping Centre earlier this week.
The closure of the store in West Sussex comes after both Halifax and Millets also announced that they would be closing their branches in Burgess Hill.
The area has lost two of its coffee shops already this year as a Costa Coffee and Harris + Hoole shut their doors.
Shoezone in Burgess Hill is set to close in March 2025.
The string of closures has left locals feeling as though their town is ‘dying.’
Lucy Hulford posted on the Burgess Hill Uncovered Facebook group: ‘What a surprise, another one going… just keeps getting worse and worse.’
Frances Smythe also said she was sad to see the store go.
She said: ‘What a bad blow to our little town. Shoe Zone is the only place I can get my size 9 sandals and I don’t travel to other towns.’
Katie Barnett added: ‘How much history we have lost! So sad,’
The Burgess Hill branch is the latest Shoe Zone to close as the company plan to move to ‘big box and hybrid’ format stores, replacing traditional high street shopfronts.
The new stores will offer more stock and a greater range of style for customers.
The shoe-seller, which has been a fixture of the British high street since 1980, closed 13 stores in 2023.
The closures saw stores in areas such as Portsmouth and Watford shut their doors and there are more planned in the coming months.
Six thousand retail outlets have closed since 2018, say the British Retail Consortium.
Helen Dickinson OBE, the trade association’s chief executive, put the decline of the British high street down to ‘crippling’ business rates and the impact of COVID-19.
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