Wolverhampton BHS building sells for £550,000 at auction
A much-loved department store has been sold at auction almost two years since it closed its doors for the final time.
BHS in Dudley Street, Wolverhampton, went under the hammer for £550,000 at a sale in London.
It is a ray of hope for the city following news of the closure of the flagship House of Fraser store in Victoria Street.
Ninety staff lost their jobs when BHS shut in August 2016.
They were among 11,000 employees affected by the closure of 164 shops across the UK when the company went into administration.
The Wolverhampton store had opened in the 1960s, with some staff having served the city’s shoppers for more than 40 years.
The collapse came just 13 months after the business was sold for £1 by tycoon Sir Philip Green to Dominic Chappell, a former banker with no retail experience.
Staff worked out that at the time of its closure they had notched up a combined total of 540 years of service in the store, with one employee having worked there for 44 years.
The freehold building, which has lain empty ever since, was sold at a specialised High Street retail auction on behalf of the administrators, Duff & Phelps, who failed to find a buyer for the business as a going concern so have been selling off individual stores piecemeal.
It was described as being in a prominent city centre location close to other big name brands such as Topshop, Marks & Spencer, Primark, H&M, McDonald’s, Starbucks and Next.
Sir Philip Green, was branded the 'unacceptable face of capitalism' after a parliamentary inquiry found he systematically extracted huge sums from the collapsed store group while leaving its pension fund in deficit. Calls were made to strip him of his knighthood.
