Marks & Spencer will announce hundreds of job cuts within days

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Marks & Spencer will axe hundreds of staff within days in the first wave of a cull that will hit thousands of workers. 

The announcement expected later this week comes after John Lewis and Boots have already shed thousands of staff in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, with at least 64,000 jobs currently at risk across the country. 

Britain’s high streets have been hammered by the crisis as millions of shoppers move to online shopping, and experts predict there will eventually be 250,000 redundancies across the sector. 

Shops are now allowed to welcome customers into stores but millions are still staying away, with footfall down 65 per cent last month compared to last year and sales tumbling by 48 per cent over the past three months.

However, there are signs of hope in the wider job market, with more than a million vacancies still being advertised last week, as experts pointed to a significant increase in positions for IT professionals.

Hundreds of job losses are expected at M&S as part of an ongoing restructuring plan which could ultimately see thousands of positions go. 

The strategy, dubbed ‘never the same again’ at the chain’s annual results in May, is expected to bring about a complete overhaul in the business in the coming months as it adapts to the long-term impact of the pandemic.

Sources close to the plans told Sky News that several thousand jobs were expected to be lost over the coming months as chief executive Steve Rowe pushes through the company’s restructuring programme.

The initial phase will see the first cuts to M&S’s 78,000-strong workforce since most of its shops were temporarily shut at the start of lockdown.

Later job losses are then likely to come after a review of costs by bosses in different parts of the company such as retail and property, clothing and home, and food and international. The total numbers axed are likely to amount to several thousand, it was reported.

This morning the M&S share price fell 1.92% to 96.92p, as of 8.30am. The wider FTSE 250 was down 0.57%. 

Earlier this month, Boots axed 4,000 jobs and closed 48 stores, citing the ‘significant impact’ of Covid-19. Meanwhile John Lewis shut eight large stores, putting 1,300 employees at risk.

Burger King also announced it would shutter one in ten outlets, jeopardising 1,600 positions.

And around 5,000 employees have gone at Cath Kidston, Laura Ashley, Harveys furniture store, Monsoon, Accessorize and Harrods.

Some 27,000 M&S employees were furloughed under the Government’s job retention scheme, which was designed to prevent mass lay-offs.

In 2018, M&S announced plans to close up to 120 of its full-line clothing stores, more than half of which have now been shut. It now has just under 300 clothing and home shops in the UK.

M&S has indicated that it will not pay shareholders a dividend for this year, while Mr Rowe has agreed to a pay freeze and, as in the last financial year, will not take an annual bonus.

An M&S spokesman said: ‘We don’t comment on speculation and, if and when we have an announcement to make, our colleagues will be the first to know.’ 

Pizza Express was to latest high street chain to reveal it was struggling, as it plans to close around 75 of its 470 UK restaurants. 

The branches are facing closure as part of a financial restructuring of the business, which is one of Britain’s biggest restaurant operators.

The exact number of branches being closed is yet to be confirmed and could depend on the progress of talks with landlords, set to start next week.

One source told Sky News the number could be higher or lower than 75, but is unlikely to be more than 20 per cent of the restaurant’s UK outlets.

That means as many 94 sites could be closed, impacting hundreds of jobs, with Pizza Express employing 8,000 workers in the UK. 

More than 250,000 High Street jobs could be axed in total as Britons move to shopping online during the coronavirus crisis.

Retail expert Richard Hyman told The Sun: ‘If you think there are 9.5million people on furlough, 250,000 redundancies is quite a reasonable ­number.

‘Pre-pandemic online sales accounted for 30 per cent of non-food sales. That will rise to 40 per cent, which means hundreds of thousands of job losses.

‘Lockdown has been the catalyst, not the cause. Big firms like John Lewis have needed to shut stores for years.’

Yesterday, as many as 484 hopefuls applied for two £9-an-hour positions at the Alexandra pub in Wimbledon, southwest London.

General manager Mick Dore posted an advert for the roles on Twitter and was staggered by the response.

He later wrote: ‘I don’t want to alarm anyone about the economy or anything, but I advertised two bar jobs at 4.30 on Thursday. We’ve had well over 400 applicants. Gulp.’

The news is reflected across the country, with bosses seeing a huge influx of applicants for entry-level jobs that would usually be unpopular.

It comes after Office For National Statistics figures last week showed workers fell by 74,000 last month, with 649,000 gone since lockdown was imposed in March.

However, other data shows the British job market is showing signs of strength, with more than a million vacancies being advertised last week. There was a significant increase in job adverts for IT professionals, recruitment specialists said. 

The leisure and hospitality sector has borne the brunt of coronavirus job cuts, with London’s Southbank Centre revealing last week it may have to cut two-thirds of its staff and Canterbury Cathedral asking workers to take voluntary redundancy.

The Southbank, which is the biggest arts complex in Europe, warns that 400 of the 600 jobs at the centre in Waterloo are at risk, despite the Government providing £1.57billion worth of financial aid to the arts sector as a whole.

Chief executive Elaine Bedell, Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff and music director Gillian Moore said in a letter to members that staff had been told that ‘very significant losses’ were likely by the end of the financial year.

The Southbank Centre comprises a number of venues for the performing arts. Its three main buildings are the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Hayward Gallery.

The organisation, which has furloughed most of its 600 employees, has predicted that it could face a £5.1million deficit for the 2020-21 financial year, the Guardian reported.

And Canterbury Cathedral’s 300 staff were previously told it would have to make job cuts in a bid to counter a ‘substantial loss of income’ as a result of the coronavirus. 

Unemployment increased by 34,000 reaching 1.3 million in April while the total figure for workers on British company payrolls fell by 649,000 between March and June, Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows.

But demand for web designers and developers has surged by 15.5 per cent over the last month, the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) has revealed.

The industry group says large and small British firms now realise digital skills are essential to all components of business – such as online sales through websites, improving marketing efforts and increasing productivity.

Deputy chief executive Anthony Walker told the BBC: ‘We’ve seen two years of digital transformation happening in the space of two weeks.

‘A lot of business leaders we’ve been talking to, and survey data, shows that digital will be more important to their business, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.’ 

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