John Lewis to seek discounts from landlords

Last month John Lewis warned of worsening conditions on the high street as it continues to face challenging sales. The retailer now is turning to its landlords to share its financial burdens.

The John Lewis Partnership, which includes supermarket chain Waitrose, is restructuring its management teams to cut 100 million pounds of costs per year. The company is now seeking discounts from its landlords, which the BBC reported will see the retailer withhold 20 per cent of service charges this quarter.

Services charges are generally due for maintenance, security, cleaning of common areas, are payable under the terms of a lease between a landlord and tenant. John Lewis operates 20 stores in shopping centres and according to the BBC it wants landlords to share the burden at a time when the group posted its first ever loss for the first half of this year.

In a statement John Lewis said: “At a time when we are doing everything we can to reduce our cost base, we have unfortunately been faced with regular increases to the service charges we pay for some of our shops in shopping centres.

“Over the last three years we have seen an increase in service charges of 20 percent and these continued increases are simply not acceptable, particularly in the absence of strenuous efforts by landlords to work collaboratively with us to reduce these costs.

“We are investing more in our current shop estate than ever before to do everything we can to encourage customers to grow footfall to our shops and we hope that our landlords will support us in continuing to do this,” it added.