Tina Davies, who worked in the Broadstairs branch of Wilko since it opened in 2015, said staff were devastated when the company collapsed and the store closed in September this year.
“The run-up to it all closing down was horrendous,” she said. “We were devastated.”
Speaking after attending the business and trade committee’s hearing with Wilko’s former bosses in Westminster on Tuesday, Davies said: “The majority of staff that worked there [in Broadstairs] at the beginning were there at the end.” Twenty-two workers were left when the branch closed its doors for the final time in September, while in the early days the staff number was probably double that, she said.
Wilko collapsed into administration in August with a debt pile of £625m and a £50m hole in the pension fund. The Canadian retail billionaire Doug Putman tried to put together a rescue deal that would have saved as many as 200 of Wilko’s 408 stores, and more than 12,000 jobs, but it fell apart at a late stage in the negotiations.
Davies recalled the weeks before Wilko finally closed down. “Everyone was checking the news on the internet to find out what was going on.
“It was really horrendous, it affected a lot of people mentally. I wouldn’t want to go through it again ever.”
In her 60s, Davies has not found a new job since her Wilko store closed. “I’m looking but I don’t know if I’m not going to resign myself to early retirement.”
Davies said it was “an absolute disgrace” that it had taken so long for the former Wilko chair Lisa Wilkinson, a member of the founding family that had still owned the retailer, to say sorry.
“How can she be a director of a company but doesn’t know how to run a business?” she said. “I would like her to say when the money is going to be paid for the pension fund.”
The Wilkinson family was among the 100 wealthiest in Britain in 2005, with an estimated fortune of £495m. Questioned by MPs on Tuesday, Wilkinson did not agree that her family were one of the wealthiest in the country, and insisted they did not have the assets to fill the £50m hole in the pension fund.
