Wilko’s sad demise is a warning sign for businesses that work from home - Jayne Dowle

Indeed, I remember when my own local town centre, in Barnsley, was eerily quiet during the darkest days of lockdown, but a trip to Wilko was a highlight of the week.

No longer. In recent months, the chain, which had been attempting to instigate a turnround plan by installing a new chair, streamlining senior management and bringing in independent retail experts, has had the stuffing knocked out of it, and 12,000 employees will find themselves looking for new jobs in a retail climate that’s less than favourable.

Over the last few months, shelves started emptying. Customers began to complain that online orders and deliveries were failing. Confidence started to ebb away; it’s reported that Wilko racked up £36.8m of losses last year on the back of a three per cent fall in sales to £1.3bn.

And now, as receivers are appointed to deal with the black hole of debt, town centres and shopping streets up and down the land may end up with yet another large hole to fill.

Here in Barnsley, Wilko has been a mainstay of the Alhambra shopping mall for decades. With footfall and disposable incomes already in freefall, it is difficult to imagine another retailer waiting in the wings to take over so much space.

In our outlying town of Wombwell too, which in the face of a number of shop closures in the last few years, Wilko has remained a huge presence on the High Street. Its loss will leave this shopping precinct bereft.

Before you shrug your shoulders and say that this is just another retailer going bust, stop a moment and consider how significant Wilko’s demise is – and what warning signs must be heeded.

The family-owned business, founded by James Kemsey Wilkinson in Leicester in 1930, traded under the name of Wilkinson until 2014, when it was snappily rebranded and brought in online ordering and click-and-collect.

Passing down the third generation of family ownership, the company has flailed in the first place perhaps because it has tried to be all things to all shoppers.

Selling homewares, toys, paint, pet supplies, cleaning materials, cosmetics, pick ’n’ mix sweets and light bulbs, among an array of other items too miscellaneous to list, it has enjoyed neither the kudos of home furnishings chains such as Dunelm and The Range, which regularly win “best retailer” awards in the consumer press, nor the cheap and cheerful appeal of multi-retailers like Poundland, Home Bargains and B&M.

All of the above are typically situated in retail parks, where it’s easy to drive up and go home with bags of compost and ironing boards.

A lesson then, in changing shopping habits; we might moan about the decline of town centres, but a drive-by experience without paying extortionate parking fees or navigating unreliable public transport has become a no-brainer for today’s hard-pressed shoppers.

Another lesson too, for the companies still operating under Covid-induced WFM rules. One source close to the business told reporters that Wilko “still has a great brand”, but said that since Covid lockdowns, there has been far too much of a laissez-faire attitude towards working practices, and this has spelt disaster for the firm. “If you’ve got a retail business in trouble, then you would want to have everyone in the head office coming in and trying to fix it,” they said. “Instead, they’ve got most people working from home. You can’t get away with running a big retail empire like that.”

We’re used to hearing that public organisations such as the Passport Office, DVLA and HMRC are creaking under the strain of thousands of staff still working from their spare rooms and garden sheds, but this – I think – is the first time that alarm has been sounded over a private company suffering because a significant proportion of its workforce is away from its office desks.

Whilst shop floor staff have borne the brunt of customer dissatisfaction, if this insider’s view holds even a grain of truth, it should send a very loud warning bell to other companies still bumping along on virtual meetings, shared Google docs and WhatsApp groups.