ICSM Homes and Gardens: full extent of Homebase’s debts revealed after 2,300 staff lost their jobs – but the brand lives on through a website
By Harry Mottram: Founded in Croydon in 1981 by supermarket giant Sainsbury’s Homebase grew to have grown to more than 300 outlets across the country but went bust in 2024. Now administrators have revealed the massive financial debts it owed £803 after creditors were paid.
Administrators Teneo Financial Advisory said: "These losses are attributed to a number of factors affecting retail and the DIY sector, including a decline in consumer confidence and spending, high-cost inflation, high interest rates, expensive freight costs, shipping delays and poor weather particularly through the peak spring and summer seasons. On present information, it is not anticipated that there will be sufficient funds to enable a distribution to be made to unsecured creditors, with the exception of the prescribed part distribution referred to below.
"It had previously been anticipated that realisations from the sale of certain Scottish leaseholds would be available to unsecured creditors. During the period, the joint administrators received further legal advice in respect of these leaseholds, which directed that there was valid fixed charge security over the proceeds and therefore these proceeds were not available to unsecured creditors. It is anticipated that there will be a maximum prescribed part fund available for distribution to unsecured creditors of £800,000."
The Range, B&Q and Wilko took on many of the stores along with some of the staff although the administrators said 2,300 workers were made redundant, with nearly one million pounds in unpaid wages. Wells Fargo Capital were paid their £20.1 million, but Ark Finco only got £57.5 million of the £80 million they were owed.
Ian Carrotte of ICSM said the figures were a sad inditement of a company that lost its focus and market. He said that initially Homebase appealed to women and homemakers with plants and gardening products and even had a tie up with Laura Ashley.
The DIY market has traditionally been dominated by men so this was a clever strategy – but times change. Buying habits in the 1980s and 1990s are very different from the noughties but when Homebase acquired Texas Homecare the firm began to carry debt. With a succession of owners, increasing costs, the Subprime Mortages crisis and eventually Covid saw the company into a spiral of decline. Coupled with the problems of being a major garden centre if the weather is bad and the writing was on the wall.
A lack of capital investment from the owners saw the remaining stores looking tired and unloved while rivals B&Q and The Range continued to dominate the market. Indeed, The Range bought the online brand of Homebase and so the name lives on but those large out of town stores have either gone or have been rebranded.
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