Popular chain shop shuts in UK city after slamming Labour tax grabs
A popular high street chain has announced the closure of its branch in a UK cathedral city after slamming "highly adverse" Government policies. Retailer Shoe Zone said its store on Silver Street in Salisbury was due to close this week, after revealing plunging annual profits and a negative forecast for 2026. The group's pre-tax profits slumped by more than two-thirds to £3.3 million in the year to September 27, down from £10.1 million the previous year.
Its profits are also forecast to drop to around £1 million in the year to October, marking a 70% annual drop. Shoe Zone shut 39 of its stores in the 2024/25 year and the upcoming Salisbury closure suggests more of its portfolio, thought to number around 260 sites, could also be in line for the chop. While no date has been confirmed for the Wiltshire branch's closure, the Salisbury Journal reports it will pull down its shutters for the last time between April and June.
In a statement last month, Shoe Zone chairman Charles Smith said tax rises announced in the Government's November budget would heap additional pressure onto the UK high street this year.
He said: "Trading conditions remained challenging in the first quarter of the new financial year, with revenue down on forecast, reflecting ongoing macro-economic pressures that continue to weigh on consumer confidence, resulting in lower footfall on the UK high street, alongside the highly adverse Government fiscal policies.
"The Government's November 2025 budget included an additional increase in the national living wage, raising our cost base further, with broader measures not materially improving consumer sentiment."
Mr Smith said other factors that impacted the retailer's drop in performance included inflation, high interest rates and reduced disposal income.
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Shoe Zone is far from the only high street mainstay that has struggled under tax hikes and lower footfall in recent months, with UK chains Claire's and The Original Factory entering administration in January.
The two retailers collapsed after it was judged that neither had "a realistic possibility of trading profitably again", putting thousands of employees' futures at risk across the country.
The crisis hitting the country's shops has been felt even more keenly by smaller, independent firms, with a recent report by Parliament's Business and Trade Committee warning that businesses were operating under pressures similar, and in some cases worse than those experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Committee chair Liam Byrne said: "High streets do not die by accident. If the Government is serious about growth, it must set out a more coherent and ambitious plan for the businesses that make up so much of the UK economy."
The Government has pledged to support smaller firms with a £4.3 billion package to cap big business rate bill hikes and confirmed plans to publish a new High Streets strategy later in the year to "reinvigorate our communities".