Mansfield BHS set to close this weekend

The department store is one of 114 across the country facing the axe on Saturday, along with 5,000 workers, after the high street company was put into administration.

More than 50 stores shut earlier this month after stock levels almost sold out.

Posters have been placed in the windows of the Westgate shop offering huge reductions to items claiming ‘everything must go’.

The upper floor of the shop has since been cleared with all stock brought down to the ground level.

Queues for the tills could be seen snaking around the store this week as shoppers grabbed themselves a last-minute bargain.

Workers said they were unable to comment on the situation, but shoppers expressed their sadness at the impending closure.

Barbara Vernon from Mansfield said: “I’ve always come here to have a look around and they’ve got some good offers in there now, but it’s a sad day, definitely.

“There are not many places like this in Mansfield, it’s been here as long as I can remember.

“Mansfield has really dropped off, it’s all to do with money.”

Diane Ryder, also from Mansfield, said: “I wouldn’t say I was in here regularly but it really is a shame and is bound to affect the town centre.

“I try to get everything from the shops or the market rather than get it online but this is the way it’s going.

“We lost Woolworths a few years ago and that was a blow.

“It makes you wonder what will happen next - Mansfield could become a ghost town the way things are.”

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the administrators, Duff and Phelps, said Mansfield’s store will close after Saturday’s trading and said all 27 employees have been ‘put on consultation’.

If a buyer is not found quickly for the doomed stores, more than 11,000 workers nationwide will lose their jobs.

Former owner of BHS, Sir Philip Green, has been accused of causing the collapse of the company.

A report into the chain found that the billionaire tycoon extracted huge sums of cash from the firm and left it ‘on life support’, before selling for a £1 in March of last year.

His failure to resolve BHS’ £571m pension deficit was a major factor in the firm’s demise, the Parliamentary inquiry added after being released this week.

Calls are now growing for Sir Philip Green, whose retail empire includes Topshop and Dorothy Perkins, to be stripped of his knighthood.

BHS, known as British Home Stores, had been a staple high street chain since it was founded by American entrepreneurs in the 1920s.

Sir Philip Green bought the company in 2000 for £200 million, and two years later changed it from a Plc to a Ltd company to give him more control.