19 April 2024

Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council (NBBC), working with Warwickshire County Council (WCC), have been planning the Transforming Nuneaton programme for years. As it slowly moves forward, the building housing the (now former) Wilkos store and Sorting Office/former Post Office is earmarked for demolition to create space for the new library/business centre. As a result, NBBC were looking to relocate WIlkos. It was an open secret that the former Woolworths/TJHughes/Poundland store on Queens Road, owned by the Borough Council (do you see a pattern here?) was the proposed site for the relocation. If you shopped regularly in Wilkos it became obvious that all was not going well as the available stock dwindled and if you read any financial news in various newspapers, you would have seen that the finances for Wilkos were not in good shape. The screenshot from a brief online search is a good indicator of the problems. Despite this evidence of issues, NBBC claims to have done due diligence before signing a lease in the weeks before Wilkos entered administration. Now the Council cannot lease the shop to anyone else until they have sorted the issues with the lease, with the Receivers. When asked by Councillor Mike Wright (Green) at the Full Council meeting this week, the Council Leader, Cllr Kris Wilson (Con) said that they had done due diligence and the issues could not have been foreseen. We beg to disagree. The borough council 'had their fingers burnt' in 2010  with the purchase of the premises that Wilkos would have relocated too. Lessons are not being learnt.