TWO Bournemouth shoe shops are set to shut in the latest blow to the town’s retail scene.

Their closure coincides with the news that administrators for a major fashion group are to close all its concessions, including those in three local stores.

tReds and Jones Bootmaker, both on Bournemouth’s Old Christchurch Road, are holding closing down sales.

Meanwhile, administrators for Calvetron – owner of Jacques Vert and Precis – announced yesterday that its concessions would close with the loss of around 840 jobs. It has concessions locally in Beales and Debenhams.

The closure of two shoe shops follows that of the Russell & Bromley, a long-standing tenant in Westover Road, last month.

tReds worker Connor McQuaid, 21, said: “Pretty much all stores in Bournemouth are slowly shutting down. We weren’t given much notice as well really.

“It’s not the company itself though, it’s the landlord that wants us gone. This end of Bournemouth is now just a ghost town. I mean, you’ll always get the bigger companies pushing out the smaller ones, but we have been here for 16 years. The Poole store is still staying up and Weymouth and Salisbury.”

Colleague Chloe Dignam, 22, said: “Ours is nothing to do with the sales, it’s just the landlord. It’s nothing to do with the brand.”

A staff member at Jones Bootmaker, who did not want to be named, said: “

Retail in the whole country has been affected. It’s not a Bournemouth issue, it’s a national issue.”

No one from tReds or Jones Bootmaker had commented at the time of going to press.

Administrators for Calvetron brands announced yesterday that they had been unable to find a buyer for the business and that all its concessions would close.

Tony Brown, chief executive of Beales, said Calvetron brands were in its Bournemouth, Poole and Southport stores. It was the group's second administration in a year and Beales had already made contingency plans, with 70 per cent of the space filled.

He said Beales would be hiring some of the staff.

"They were big brands but they haven’t kept up with changes in customer behaviour," he said.