Ashley eviction threat

LANDLORDS have threatened to kick Mike Ashley’s House of Fraser stores out of their properties unless the billionaire starts paying rent.

The Sports Direct owner is understood to have angered landlords as he withholds rent while deciding how many of House of Fraser’s 59 stores to keep open.

Ashley, 54, said he hoped to save the majority of the department store’s sites after buying it out of administration for £90m last year.

But the landlord of House of Fraser’s Rackhams store in Altrincham’s Stamford Quarter shopping centre has served Ashley a notice to leave the site, warning that others may follow his lead.

Iain Minto, shopping centre director of M&M, which owns Stamford Quarter, said: ‘Sports Direct have been in this building for nine months and at the moment they’re still trying to work out what to do with the wider business.

‘We don’t want the building to sit there forever and a day, we want to invest in the town.’