Body blow Retailer owes thousands to councils

BODY Shop owes thousands of pounds to councils and business across the Bristol area after the retailer fell into administration.

The cosmetics brand was forced to close nearly half of its 198 stores across the UK, including its store on Queens Road in Bristol.

Stores in Cabot Circus and Cribbs Causeway both remain open, but its new owner, private equity firm Aurelius, is trying to balance the books. According to Companies House, Body Shop owes money to 652 company creditors, with the total owed amounting to £44,626,414.43.

Among these funds, Bristol City Council is due £2,923 and South Gloucestershire Council is owed £13,962.

These outstanding payments are suspected of being business rates and councils are expected to contact administrators over how to clear these debts.

Bristol City Council and South Gloucestershire Council are not the only local authorities listed to be owed money, with councils in Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire all named in the documents.

Multiple firms across the Bristol area are also owed money by Body Shop, which includes Payroll and HR solutions firm Zellis UK Limited in Almonsbury is owed £27,907.19.

Workman LLP in Bristol is owed £13,008.11, DPD UK is due £11,405.66, £4,583.33 is owed to Christopher Newick and Text Marketer is owed £1,123.20.

Companies House documents do not declare what the paid works were for.

The Body Shop is yet to repay more than £44 million to creditors according to Companies House documents.

Around 82 of the 197 UK stores have closed and 425 people lost their jobs, with a further 329 people being made redundant at the head office.

The Body Shop fell into administration in early February after previous forecasts for how much funding it would need to keep going proved too low.

The business had previously expected that its peak funding requirement would be £63 million, but it later had to revise this forecast to “in excess of £100 million”, a report sent from the administrators to creditors showed.

The Body Shop was founded by Dame Anita Roddick in 1976, trading out of a small shop in Brighton originally and made its name selling cruelty-free fairtrade products. However administrators said, in the late 1990s, the company was “no longer offering a distinctive product” at an “agreeable” price as other brands adopted similar policies and stricter laws came into force.

The company was sold to cosmetics giant L’Oreal in 2006 “who deviated from the core values that drove the brand’s earlier success,” FRP said.

Natura bought the business in 2017 and “attempted to return … to its founding principles”.

The report added this effort was “ultimately unsuccessful” in getting consumers interested again.