Businesses in and around Sunderland permanently closed due to the pandemic

For Sunderland, like cities across the country, it’s meant closures of some big high street names.

At The Bridges, losing its biggest retailer, Debenhams, has been a crushing blow for those employed at the household name, as well as for the shopping centre itself.

It was confirmed on Monday, January 25, that online fashion retailer, Boohoo, had reached an agreement to buy the 242-year-old Debenhams brand and website for £55 million.

However, despite the department store name surviving, the company’s remaining 118 stores across the country, including Sunderland’s, will close for good – resulting in around 12,000 job losses.

The three-storey store in Sunderland city centre has been a staple of The Bridges for a number of years.

Another huge loss is that of Topshop and Topman which shared a unit in the shopping centre.

On Monday, February 1, ASOS confirmed it had sealed a takeover following the collapse of the Arcadia retail empire in a £295 million deal.

The online fashion retailer bought Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge and HIIT, after Sir Philip Green’s retail group fell into administration in November last year.

Like many store across the country, the fashion store in The Bridges Shopping Centre has been stripped bare.

Last month, Thorntons announced it was closing all shops, affecting 600 jobs.

It blamed ‘changing dynamics of the high street’, a rise in online shopping and ‘the numerous lockdown restrictions’ over the last year, especially during its key trading periods at Christmas and Easter.

Shops in the North East include stores at the Bridges shopping centre in Sunderland and Dalton Park in Murton.

Despite the losses at The Bridges, the management say there is light at the end of the tunnel as its remaining non-essential shops reopen from April 12, with talks ongoing with new occupiers and existing tenants carrying out significant refurbishment and investment in their stores this year.

The hospitality industry has also been brought to its knees by the pandemic.

In Sunderland, it’s led to the closure of Revolution in Low Row which shut down permanently after the chain’s bosses ordered a series of closures in a bid to save the company.

The popular chain had been in the city for a decade and was once one of the town’s busiest bars.

Other hospitality closures in the past year include Pizza Express in Dalton Park which was among 73 of the chain’s restaurants to close after restructuring plans were approved by creditors.

Pizza Express is one of many dining chain to shut sites after revenues dived following the enforced closure of its restaurants in March, 2020.

Elsewhere in the country, a number of restaurant chains have closed some, or all, of the sites due to the pandemic.

These include branches of Byron, Pret a Manger, Ask Italian, Zizzi, Cafe Rouge, Bella Italia and Carluccio’s.

Fashion-wise, there have also been store closures at branches of Cath Kidston, Laura Ashley, Oasis and Warehouse, among others, many of which had stores in the MetroCentre and Newcastle.

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