BrightHouse to close city centre store
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A CHAIN store which provides household goods to customers on hire purchase agreements is closing its High Street store.
BrightHouse, Britain’s biggest rent-to-own retailer, has broken the bad news to staff.
In a press statement the company said it would try to find stricken employees other jobs within the company.
The firm did not give a closure date nor did it clarify the number of staff affected.
A company spokeswoman said: "It is with regret that we announced the closing of our Inverness store to our employees.
"BrightHouse occasionally has to close a store which is no longer profitable. Where this happens, we will seek to redeploy our colleagues and communicate to our customers the alternatives available to them."
A spokesman for the Inverness Business Improvement District (Bid) said the move obviously reflected a change in the industry.
The BrightHouse closure announcement comes a year after the firm was ordered to repay £14.8 million to nearly 250,000 customers by the Financial Conduct Authority.
It found BrightHouse had not been a "responsible lender".
And BrightHouse last year announced that it was set to close a number of its stores as it struggled to cope with increased regulatory scrutiny of its business practices.
This prompted a response from the Centre for Responsible Credit, which said it would "shed no tears" if BrightHouse collapsed.
BrightHouse did not wish to comment. The store’s imminent closure comes six weeks after the Inverness Queensgate branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland closed and the bank’s High Street branch relocated to the Eastgate Shopping centre, leaving another empty shop.
