Carphone Warehouse which has stores in King's Lynn and Fakenham announces closures

Carphone Warehouse, which has stores in Lynn and Fakenham has announced it is to close all its 531 standalone stores on April 3, resulting in 2,900 redundancies.

The move is not due to coronavirus, the firm says, but because of the changing mobile market.

The mobile phone retailer also has shops inside large PC World and Curry's stores, which won't be affected by the changes.

It has stores in Lynn's Vancouver Quarter and also in Bridge Street at Fakenham.

The firm has also said that it expects that around 40 per of staff affected by the closures will take new roles in the business.

Group chief executive Alex Baldock said customers were increasingly buying online and from its big stores which sold computers and TVs as well as mobiles instead of its smaller, standalone mobile shops.

"They can't find all this in the small mobile-only stores that are one-twentieth of the size; they're visiting these less and these stores are losing more money as a result," he said.

He said it was the toughest decision the business has had to make, but it was a necessary one.

Customers want help with all technology, all in one place, and this pattern will continue in a more connected 5G world, he said.

Back in 2011, the Lynn's Carphone Warehouse in Broad Street store was selected as one of the first in the national chain's eastern region to undergo a £100,000 refit.