Waterstones to quarantine browsed books

BOOKS will be quarantined if customers pick them up but don’t buy them, Waterstones’ chief executive has said.

Elsewhere on the high street, items of clothing will be removed from the shop floor if a customer has tried them on, under plans to reopen stores.

There is evidence that coronaviruses can live on cloth for two days and on paper for up to a week.

James Daunt, the Waterstones CEO, said books picked up by browsing customers would be quarantined for at least three days before being returned to the shop floor, to protect people from potential health risks.

“Books don’t go bad like a stick of celery,” Mr Daunt said. “We will still have tables displaying books, but we will have systems in place to ensure books that are browsed do not remain on sale. We will ask customers that pick up a book to put it on a trolley that we can wheel away. I think customers will find that easy to understand.”

Waterstones’ turnover is currently running at 40 per cent of pre-lockdown levels, with customers turning to online shopping.

Mr Daunt said most sales were of well-known books because shoppers were unable to spend time browsing through shelves or ask staff for help. A quarantine system is also likely to be employed in clothes shops, with Government guidance telling retailers to “consider very carefully whether fitting rooms should be open, given the challenges in operating them safely”.

If shops do choose to open fitting rooms, they should consider “creating procedures to manage clothes that have been tried on, for example delaying their return to the shop floor”.

Fitting rooms should be cleaned between each use and there should be no close contact between staff and customers.

Returned items should be kept separate from other stock until stores are satisfied it is safe to put them out.

The British Retail Consortium said any decision on opening changing rooms or quarantining clothes would be up to individual retailers.