Midland chandlers - Store closures?

[Lily Rose]

Just now, Tony Brooks said:

 

That can't possibly be true, can it. We are told private companies are far more efficient than state ones, so this must just be more BBC bias.

 

 

 

Perhaps someone should check a more reliable source. GBNews maybe?

 

Any volunteers?

[WulfNut]

On 13/02/2026 at 12:02, IanD said:

Shops (like barbers...) which are new and flashily fitted out but hardly ever seem to have any customers in them might be a clue -- especially when there are several close together, you have to ask where all the people needing a haircut have suddenly come from when there only used to be one "traditional" barber/hairdresser in the neighbourhood...

And high prices.  Basically,  pretending the a move around with a pair of scissors for 10 mins is earning them an electricians wage

11 minutes ago, Lily Rose said:

Perhaps someone should check a more reliable source. GBNews maybe?

 

Any volunteers?

Your own letterbox should suffice.   Mine gets more visits from local takeaways than royal mail these days. 

[Llamedos]

Just a quick update regarding the original post.

 

I wasn’t disputing the accuracy but thought I’d drop Midland Chandlers an email asking to formally confirm the stores were closing. This is the reply I received this morning which is fair enough, they clearly needed to tell their staff first. 

 

Hi Mark,    Thank you for your email.    I can confirm this is the case. We will be issuing formal communications to all customers later this week, once we have completed the initial consultation process with the colleagues directly affected.    Please let me know if you have any questions, I am happy to support where I can.  Kind Regards Carly Selby Marine Sales Manager LKQ UK and Ireland

[Liam]

Backs up what I heard. All staff currently waiting for the official letter with either their redundancy package. Apparently a list of alternative posts within the company has been circulated to all Midland Chandlers staff should they want to remain with the company, but there's nothing within the Marine channel and it's all for positions within Euro Car Parts.

[Mike Todd]

2 hours ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

That can't possibly be true, can it. We are told private companies are far more efficient than state ones, so this must just be more BBC bias.

 

 

 

Nah, wrong bias. It is all about these funny foreigners taking of our famous brands and running (down) the service in order to make better profit - just not British! (Don't suggest this should be in politics as it is only humorous irony!)

[Llamedos]

45 minutes ago, Liam said:

Backs up what I heard. All staff currently waiting for the official letter with either their redundancy package. Apparently a list of alternative posts within the company has been circulated to all Midland Chandlers staff should they want to remain with the company, but there's nothing within the Marine channel and it's all for positions within Euro Car Parts.

It sounds like they’re handling it as well as they can in the circumstances, some companies are far more brutal in the way they handle redundancy. Better a job at Euro Car Parts than no job at all. Clearly it isn’t going to work for all staff though, what with travelling distances and other considerations. 

[Mike Todd]

2 hours ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

That can't possibly be true, can it. We are told private companies are far more efficient than state ones, so this must just be more BBC bias.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 16 by Mike Todd

[cuthound]

7 hours ago, GUMPY said:

Working for myself ordering from RS was never a problem. I go back far enough to remember them as  Radio Spares and the trade counter in Epworth Street.

I was unaware of CPC until after the Farnell takeover.

 

Yup I remember queuing up at Epworth Street with a Post Office Local Order in my hand.

[Ronaldo47]

9 hours ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

That can't possibly be true, can it. We are told private companies are far more efficient than state ones, so this must just be more BBC bias.

 

 

 

Private companies may or may not be more efficient than public ones, but in the absence of specific legally-enforceable conditions, my understanding is that any efficiency savings made by private companies (other than ones like the statutory not-for-profit private water company that used to supply our water prior to privatisation)  would legally need be used to benefit the company's shareholders, not its customers (as with the for-profit water company that now supplies our water).  

 

I serm to recall it being said that one of the Southern water companies abolished its leak detection and repair department because it was cheaper to accept the loss of water than employing team that used to detect and fix leaks,  something that made  sense in terms of money. 

Edited February 16 by Ronaldo47

[Tony Brooks]

18 minutes ago, Ronaldo47 said:

Private companies may or may not be more efficient than public ones, but in the absence of specific legally-enforceable conditions, my understanding is that any efficiency savings made by private companies (other than ones like the statutory not-for-profit private water company that used to supply our water prior to privatisation)  would legally need be used to benefit the company's shareholders, not its customers (as with the for-profit water company that now supplies our water).  

 

I serm to recall it being said that one of the Southern water companies abolished its leak detection and repair department because it was cheaper to accept the loss of water than employing team that used to detect and fix leaks,  something that made  sense in terms of money. 

 

Which is why UK company law should have been overhauled many years ago, when privatisation started.

 

Yes, shareholders need rewards, but so do the employees and the society the company operates in.  I would suggest that duty to ensure the good of society gets added to the directors' duties, and employee representation on the board. That seems to work in Germany, they seem to indulge in less short-termism, referring to add value over many years. Both hard to draft to provide adequate recompense when things go wrong, but worth a try.

[Alway Swilby]

2 hours ago, cuthound said:

 

Yup I remember queuing up at Epworth Street with a Post Office Local Order in my hand.

I never quite understood how a Local Order worked. I used them to order spare parts from the PABX manufacturer Philips. I would ring my boss and get a Local Order number, then ring Philips and order the required circuit board. And the next day the board would turn up at the customer's site. I've no idea how Philips got paid by the PO/BT. 

[ditchcrawler]

For those that do Facebook Kings Lock reduced their hours due to falling sales (1) Kings Bromley Wharf Narrowboats Ltd | Facebook

[matty40s]

7 hours ago, Llamedos said:

It sounds like they’re handling it as well as they can in the circumstances, some companies are far more brutal in the way they handle redundancy. Better a job at Euro Car Parts than no job at all. Clearly it isn’t going to work for all staff though, what with travelling distances and other considerations. 

Washington Post ( owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon,,the 3rd richest person in the world)sacking all its foreign based journalists even in Warzones at 1hour notice...and them having to crowdfund their own escapes from wherever they were...Kiev was 72 hours without power for that journalist.

[David Mack]

1 hour ago, ditchcrawler said:

For those that do Facebook Kings Lock reduced their hours due to falling sales (1) Kings Bromley Wharf Narrowboats Ltd | Facebook

I can think of a few chandlers that have closed over the years - Cowroast marina, Stone Boatbuilding, Rose Narrowboats at Brinklow, Puffer Parts at Keighley. All presumably victims of fewer in-person customers due to customers buying online - either from specialist suppliers for the marine-specific stuff and the likes of Screwfix and Toolstation for general hardware.

[Tonka]

How awful for the employees to find out that they were losing their jobs by reading this forum before being told officially

[Liam]

All the staff members found out first, and were told in a meeting last Thurs 12th. It's from that meeting that this information is being circulated.

[system 4-50]

I suspect that it's often not the shock for the staff that you might think.  I have visited many shops over the years and thought "the service in here is a bit odd", only to find that the business has folded a few months later.  The air of gloom is palpable in such places.

[cuthound]

11 hours ago, Alway Swilby said:

I never quite understood how a Local Order worked. I used them to order spare parts from the PABX manufacturer Philips. I would ring my boss and get a Local Order number, then ring Philips and order the required circuit board. And the next day the board would turn up at the customer's site. I've no idea how Philips got paid by the PO/BT. 

 

The office used to have a book of them, each page duplicated.

 

You filled in the top sheet, with a piece of carbon paper under it to transfer what you wrote to the second copy.

 

The top copy was given to the company and the carbon copy sent to the finance group, who would pay the comapany.

[frangar]

9 hours ago, David Mack said:

I can think of a few chandlers that have closed over the years - Cowroast marina, Stone Boatbuilding, Rose Narrowboats at Brinklow, Puffer Parts at Keighley. All presumably victims of fewer in-person customers due to customers buying online - either from specialist suppliers for the marine-specific stuff and the likes of Screwfix and Toolstation for general hardware.

Arleighs take over of all the major trade suppliers didn’t help the smaller independent chandleries…it just wasn’t cost effective to source the stock as they had a monopoly on the more niche narrowboat bits. 

[Rob-M]

8 minutes ago, cuthound said:

 

The office used to have a book of them, each page duplicated.

 

You filled in the top sheet, with a piece of carbon paper under it to transfer what you wrote to the second copy.

 

The top copy was given to the company and the carbon copy sent to the finance group, who would pay the comapany.

I used to have similar for rail tickets, had a little book that I put the journey details in, sent copy to the finance department and gave the top copy to the ticket office in exchange for a first class ticket.

[Llamedos]

13 hours ago, matty40s said:

Washington Post ( owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon,,the 3rd richest person in the world)sacking all its foreign based journalists even in Warzones at 1hour notice...and them having to crowdfund their own escapes from wherever they were...Kiev was 72 hours without power for that journalist.

Yes American companies are often the worst. I remember back in the 1980s I was staying in a hotel near Coventry and there was a ‘so called’ conference for the sales force of a US company taking place at the same hotel. Turns out it wasn’t really a conference, they’d called them all there to sack them en masse. Several car transporters duly turned up on the car park and took away their company cars. A lot of those guys were in tears. They were at least given a train ticket home in this case, but not much more, it was pretty bloody. 

[Mike Tee]

Standard way to get sacked in America back in the 70's was to get back from lunch on a Friday and there would be a note on your desk and a security guard waiting with a cardboard box! You would then be escorted out with your private stuff in the box (after it was inspected by the guard), and all keys, card passes, car keys etc handed over.

[IanD]

7 minutes ago, Mike Tee said:

Standard way to get sacked in America back in the 70's was to get back from lunch on a Friday and there would be a note on your desk and a security guard waiting with a cardboard box! You would then be escorted out with your private stuff in the box (after it was inspected by the guard), and all keys, card passes, car keys etc handed over.

Not just in the US, and not just in the 1970s -- I've seen it happen in the UK much more recently than that... 😞 

Edited February 17 by IanD

[Victor Vectis]

And who says trades unions are not needed these days!

[GUMPY]

Many years ago a friend walked into work one day to be greeted by the receptionist saying "what you doing here?".

Everybody in the company knew he was sacked but no one had told him.

He came to work for us and was superb at his job.