A soft-furnishing retailer has blamed months of roadworks for its decision to close down.
The Fabric Shop says the local authority-funded installation of a heat network across large parts of Worthing town centre, including its main store, has severely hit footfall during its construction.
Its smaller Burgess Hill, West Sussex store will also close.
Owners Rose and Peter Muzio, who launched the business in 1994, say the roadworks have ‘caused a drastic reduction in customer numbers. Due to this and our huge reduction in turnover over the last nine months means our business is unsustainable. In our experience, once customers avoid an area due to disruption they do not easily return.
‘We are bewildered that Worthing Borough Council could not foresee the scale of disruption to local businesses and the community at large and still don’t seem to. We would like to send heartfelt thanks to all of our customers past and present for your custom, support and creativity over the years. We hope that we may get to see some of our customers in the coming days.’
No date has been set for the closure and the stores will remain open subject to remaining stock.
Retailers in the town had hoped that construction would be paused during the summer, but contractor Hemiko says ‘To keep Worthing moving, highways work on main roads are being limited to one location at a time, across just two locations.’
The work has been criticised for long periods of seeming-inactivity, with only small areas of the scheme being worked on at any one time.
