More than 3,000 jobs have been lost  – nearly 100 of them in Staffordshire and the Black Country – as ailing fashion chain Peacocks was sold out of administration.

The deal with Edinburgh Woollen Mill will save 388 shops and more than 6,000 jobs, but administrators from KPMG said it had been forced to close 224 stores with immediate effect, leading to 3,100 redundancies.

A total of 93 jobs have been lost with the closure of stores in Stafford, Wolverhampton, Brierley Hill, Merry Hill, West Bromwich and Halesowen.

Other closures in the West Midlands involve stores in Redditch, two in Telford, Oswestry, Market Drayton, Woodchurch and Birmingham St Andrews, taking the regional job loss total to 163.

Many branches closed immediately after the official announcement yesterday afternoon, although the Stafford branch at Queen’s Retail Park traded until the end of the day.

Yesterday staff pulled down the shutters on the Wolverhampton store in the Wulfrun Centre at 3pm after being told  shops were closing “immediately”.