B&M will close its 20,000 sq ft store on County Road in Walton, Liverpool, on 6 November 2026, the discount chain has confirmed. The B&M County Road closure removes the largest general store from one of north Liverpool’s traditional shopping parades and sends its customers to two sister stores roughly a mile away, according to Retail Gazette and the Express. Every member of staff at the branch has been promised a job at another local B&M shop.
The decision lands in the middle of a wider reshaping of the B&M estate. Since August the retailer has relocated a Welsh town-centre store to a retail park, temporarily shut a Sunderland branch to finish an expansion, and relaunched a Wigan store as its first “store of the future”. County Road is the first outright closure in that sequence, and it comes six days before B&M reports half-year results on 12 November.
In short
- What is closing: B&M’s 20,000 sq ft store on County Road, Walton, Liverpool, on 6 November 2026.
- Staff: B&M says every affected colleague will be offered employment at other local stores in the surrounding area.
- Nearest alternatives: Great Homer Street and Utting Avenue, both about a mile away, both with garden centres and larger ranges; Clayton Square, Bootle New Strand and The Rock in Birkenhead further out.
- Why it matters locally: County Road sits beside Goodison Park, where Everton’s men’s team stopped playing in 2025; traders there had already warned about lost matchday trade.
- The bigger picture: B&M runs 777 UK stores, posted flat like-for-like sales in FY26 and a 2.3% like-for-like decline in Q1 FY27, and is spending this year upgrading formats rather than chasing volume.
What exactly has B&M announced?
B&M has confirmed that its County Road store in the Walton district of Liverpool will trade for the last time on Friday 6 November 2026. Retail Gazette reported the closure on 11 September, and the Express carried the same statement a day earlier. The site is one of B&M’s larger urban formats at roughly 20,000 sq ft, stocking the chain’s standard mix of food, toys, homewares and electricals.
In its statement, quoted by both publishers, the retailer said: “We remain committed to bringing the best possible B&M stores and shopping experience to our customers across Liverpool.” It added that customers would “continue to find the same great B&M value at our nearby stores” and that “all colleagues affected by the closure on November 6 2026, will be offered employment at other local B&M stores in the surrounding area.”
B&M has not given a reason for the closure, and neither publication reported one. The company has not said whether the lease is expiring, whether the building has been sold, or whether the store failed an internal profitability test. Those questions matter for the parade, because a 20,000 sq ft unit on a district high street is hard to re-let quickly, as our analysis of how chains decide which stores to close first has set out.
Timeline of the announcement
- 10 September 2026: the Express publishes B&M’s statement confirming the 6 November closure date.
- 11 September 2026: Retail Gazette reports the closure, adding the list of alternative Merseyside stores.
- 6 November 2026: last trading day at County Road.
- 12 November 2026: B&M publishes interim results for the 26 weeks to 26 September, per a stock exchange notice on timing.
Where will County Road shoppers be sent instead?
B&M’s statement points customers to two stores that are each about a mile from County Road: Great Homer Street, on the edge of the Everton district towards the city centre, and Utting Avenue in Walton. Both are larger than the County Road branch and both include a B&M garden centre, which the closing store does not have. The company says they “offer an even bigger range of products under one roof”.
Beyond those two, Retail Gazette lists three more Merseyside branches: Clayton Square in Liverpool city centre, Bootle New Strand shopping centre to the north, and The Rock retail park in Birkenhead across the Mersey. For a shopper without a car on County Road, the practical replacement is Great Homer Street, which is served by the same bus corridor along the A59.
| B&M store | Location | Approximate distance from County Road | Garden centre | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Great Homer Street | Everton, Liverpool | About 1 mile | Yes | Named by B&M as the main alternative; larger range |
| Utting Avenue | Walton, Liverpool | About 1 mile | Yes | Named by B&M as the main alternative; larger range |
| Clayton Square | Liverpool city centre | About 3 miles | No | City-centre shopping centre unit |
| Bootle New Strand | Bootle, Sefton | About 2 miles | No | Shopping centre unit north of Walton |
| The Rock | Birkenhead, Wirral | About 5 miles (via tunnel) | Not stated | Retail park format |
Distances are approximate road distances based on the store addresses B&M publishes; garden centre details are as described in B&M’s statement and Retail Gazette’s report.
What happens to the County Road unit?
B&M has not said what will happen to the building after 6 November. The store is listed on the retailer’s own website at 9-23 County Road, a run of units on the western side of the parade. Nothing has been published about a new tenant, and Liverpool City Council has not commented on the closure. A unit of this size on a district centre typically sits between a supermarket and a gym in the list of realistic occupiers, and both take time to sign.
Why does County Road matter more than a typical closure?
County Road is not an ordinary high street. Together with Walton Road it forms the County district centre, which Liverpool City Council describes as the historic retail heart of the Walton community, about three miles north of the city centre along the A59. It sits within a few hundred metres of Goodison Park, and for more than a century its shops, cafes and pubs traded on Everton matchdays.
That matchday economy changed in 2025. Everton’s men’s team played their final season at Goodison in 2024/25 and moved to the Hill Dickinson Stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock, on the waterfront, ahead of 2025/26. Goodison now hosts Everton Women, which brings far smaller crowds. Local traders warned in advance about the effect. Emil Rahaeanu, owner of Emil’s Kitchen on County Road, told LiverpoolWorld that businesses around the ground would “die slowly” and that his own sales would be “100% affected”. The landlord of the Winslow Hotel, a pub yards from the stadium, later said the move had taken the “soul” out of the area.
B&M has not linked the closure to the stadium move, and it would be wrong to assume the two are connected. A discount variety store trades on weekly household shopping, not on 19 home fixtures a year. But the loss of a 20,000 sq ft anchor from a parade that has already lost its biggest footfall generator is exactly the kind of compounding effect that independent retailers have been asking councils to plan for.
What regeneration money is already committed?
Liverpool City Council launched a ten-year masterplan for the County district centre in January 2021, backed by £1 million from the Liverpool City Region Town Centre Fund and alongside a £4.5 million upgrade of the A59 through County Road. The plan, badged “remember, reimagine and revitalise”, included a small-grants business fund for shopfront improvements, a refurbished Spellow Library as a community hub, a dedicated County community police team, and an annual Christmas on County event.
Everton and its charity, Everton in the Community, were partners in that plan, having invested more than £10 million in the area over the preceding years. Since then the council’s draft Liverpool Local Plan to 2043 has named County Road, alongside Great Homer Street, Garston, Old Swan, Walton Vale and Allerton Road, as a district centre where planning policy should push for a wider mix of shops, services, leisure and homes. A proposed walking and cycling route known as the Toffee Trail is intended to link Goodison to the new stadium and open up housing sites along the way.
Is B&M shrinking, or moving its shops around?
The County Road announcement reads as a closure, but B&M’s recent estate activity is mostly relocation and refurbishment rather than retreat. The company opened 64 gross new stores across the UK and France in the year to 28 March 2026, or 33 net once closures were counted, and it has told investors it still aims for roughly 1,200 B&M stores in the UK over the long term, opening 25 to 35 a year. It currently trades from 777 UK stores, 135 in France and 343 Heron Foods and B&M Express convenience shops, according to figures reported by Retail Gazette in August.
The pattern of 2026 moves is consistent: swap smaller town-centre units for larger retail-park boxes with garden centres, and refit the stores that stay. County Road, a large unit on a Victorian parade with no garden centre and two bigger B&M stores within a mile, fits the profile of a store that is surplus to that plan.
| Date | Store | Action | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 August 2026 | Carmarthen, Hall Street | Closed and relocated | Reopened 22 August at Parc Pensarn Retail Park in a former B&Q, with a garden centre and larger frozen, paint and wallpaper ranges |
| 16–22 August 2026 | Sunderland, Hylton Riverside | Five-day closure | Final phase of an expansion, reopened 22 August |
| 28 August 2026 | Wigan, Worthington Way | Relaunched | First “store of the future”: 24,449 sq ft, new frozen section, self-checkouts, assistance buttons, staff headsets |
| 6 November 2026 | Liverpool, County Road | Closure | 20,000 sq ft; staff redeployed; customers directed to Great Homer Street and Utting Avenue |
| FY26 (year to 28 March) | Heron Foods estate | 11 openings, 12 closures | Convenience arm broadly flat on store numbers |
Sources: Retail Gazette reports of 6 August, 12 August and 11 September 2026; B&M FY26 preliminary results.
What the Wigan “store of the future” tells us
The Worthington Way relaunch on 28 August is the clearest statement of where B&M wants its estate to go. The 24,449 sq ft store stayed open throughout its refit and now carries a new frozen food section, self-checkouts, customer assistance buttons, refreshed signage, upgraded displays and a redesigned layout. Behind the scenes, staff wear communication headsets so they can respond to those assistance calls.
Chief executive Tjeerd Jegen said at the launch: “We’ve listened to our customers and colleagues to create a shopping experience that is more inspirational, more intuitive and even easier.” The retailer has said it will study how shoppers respond before deciding which elements to roll out across the wider estate, and Retail Gazette noted refits already completed in Corby, Towcester, Beeston and elsewhere in Liverpool. The County Road store was not on that list.
How is B&M trading, and why is it in an “investment year”?
B&M’s financial backdrop explains why it is editing its estate rather than expanding on every front. In the 52 weeks to 28 March 2026 the group grew revenue 3.6% to £5.8 billion, and B&M UK sales rose 2.9% to £4.62 billion, but UK like-for-like sales were flat. Adjusted EBITDA fell 25.9% to £459 million from £620 million, statutory pre-tax profit dropped 47.3% to £227 million from £431 million, and the company booked a £36 million impairment charge against £3 million the year before.
Jegen, who took over in 2025, called FY26 “a difficult year” marked by “challenging market and execution issues”. His “Back to B&M Basics” programme has focused on sharper prices, better availability, fewer grocery lines and a revamped promotional calendar. The shares rose about 15% on results day in June, according to BusinessCloud, but were still down roughly 41% over twelve months.
| Measure | FY26 (52 weeks to 28 March 2026) | Q1 FY27 (13 weeks to late June 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Group revenue | £5.8bn, +3.6% | £1,433m, +2.0% |
| B&M UK revenue | £4.62bn, +2.9% | £1,135m, +0.3% |
| B&M UK like-for-like | Flat | -2.3% |
| B&M France revenue / LFL | Not separately reported here | £156m, +14.6% / +5.3% |
| Heron Foods revenue / LFL | 11 openings, 12 closures | £142m, +2.8% / +2.6% |
| Adjusted EBITDA | £459m, -25.9% | Not reported at Q1 |
| Statutory pre-tax profit | £227m, -47.3% | Not reported at Q1 |
| UK store count | 777 B&M plus 343 Heron / Express | Broadly unchanged |
Sources: B&M FY26 preliminary results announcement (3 June 2026) and Q1 FY27 trading statement (15 July 2026), as reported by Retail Gazette, BusinessCloud and Insight DIY.
The Q1 like-for-like decline
The first quarter of the new financial year, reported on 15 July, showed B&M UK like-for-like sales down 2.3%. The company attributed the fall to a slow start to the garden season against an unusually strong comparative in spring 2025, and said general merchandise returned to growth in May and June. It also said clearance discipline meant it left the garden season with normal stock levels, which matters for margin in the autumn.
France was the bright spot, with like-for-like sales up 5.3% and revenue up 14.6% to £156 million, while Heron Foods grew like-for-like sales 2.6%. For a UK shopper the relevant point is that management has told investors this is a year of investment in stores, not a year of squeezing costs, which is why a large but unrefitted urban store with two better-invested neighbours is the kind of site that gets closed rather than upgraded.
What does the closure mean for the rest of County Road?
An anchor store closing on a district centre affects the independents around it in three ways: footfall, adjacency and perception. Footfall is the obvious one; a 20,000 sq ft discount store draws a steady weekday flow of household shoppers who also visit the butcher, the bakery and the pharmacy on the same trip. Adjacency is the pattern of complementary trade, where a customer buys cleaning products at B&M and fresh food from an independent next door. Perception is the hardest to measure and the slowest to recover: a boarded 20,000 sq ft frontage tells every passer-by that the parade is in decline.
The County Road traders who spoke to local media when Everton left were describing exactly that chain of effects. The stadium move removed a matchday crowd; the B&M closure removes a weekday one. The two are unrelated in B&M’s decision-making, but they hit the same shopkeepers.
Lessons from other 2026 closure programmes
The high street has seen larger closure programmes this year, and they are worth comparing with County Road because the mechanics differ. TG Jones, the former WHSmith high street business, is shutting 19 shops across September, several of them the only Post Office counter in town, a story we covered in detail in our report on the TG Jones September closures. Those are portfolio-wide cuts by a new private owner. B&M’s County Road decision is a single-site edit inside a chain that is still opening more shops than it closes.
In the value sector specifically, Poundland’s 900-shop estate is being reshaped under Gordon Brothers, and Poundstretcher’s owner Fortress is now in early talks to buy it, as we reported in our coverage of the Poundland takeover talks. That deal, if it happens, would create a rival discount estate with a heavy presence in exactly the kind of northern district centres where B&M is now consolidating into fewer, larger stores.
| Retailer | 2026 estate action | Scale | Driver | Staff outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B&M | Single closure (County Road) plus relocations and refits | 1 closure; 777 UK stores | Estate editing during an investment year; two larger stores within a mile | All redeployed locally, per company |
| TG Jones (ex WHSmith) | Programme of 19 closures in September | 19 of about 480 shops | Post-sale restructuring under Modella Capital | Consultations; Post Office counters at risk |
| Poundland | Restructuring under Gordon Brothers; potential sale to Fortress | About 900 shops | Ownership change and rescue plan | Dependent on outcome of talks |
What should shoppers and local businesses do before 6 November?
For customers, the practical change is a longer journey for the same range. B&M’s Great Homer Street and Utting Avenue stores are both larger and both have garden centres, so most County Road regulars will find what they bought before, plus outdoor lines. Anyone relying on the County Road branch for a particular frozen or grocery line should check the nearest Heron Foods, B&M’s convenience format, which trades from 343 shops nationally including several in north Liverpool.
For staff, the company’s commitment is specific: employment at other local B&M stores in the surrounding area, rather than a general offer to “explore opportunities”. That wording, repeated in both published reports, suggests roles have already been identified across the Merseyside estate, which had a net expansion last year.
A checklist for neighbouring independents
- Measure the baseline now. Record weekly transactions and footfall through September and October so the effect of the closure can be shown to the council and to landlords.
- Talk to the County ward team. The 2021 masterplan created a business fund for shopfront and property improvements; ask whether any allocation remains and how the Local Plan district-centre policy applies.
- Coordinate on the empty unit. A group letter from traders to the landlord and the council about preferred uses (food, health, leisure) is more effective than individual complaints.
- Plan Christmas on County early. The annual event was designed to pull footfall to the parade in December; the first Christmas without B&M and without Everton men’s fixtures is the one to invest in.
- Check business rates. From 1 April 2026 a shop with a rateable value under £51,000 pays a 38.2p multiplier and one between £51,000 and £499,999 pays 43p, replacing the old 40% retail relief; a loss of trade after the closure may support a rateable-value challenge on grounds of a material change in circumstances.
What the business rates change means for a County Road shop
The closure arrives in the first year of a new business rates regime for shops in England. Until 31 March 2026, retail, hospitality and leisure premises received a 40% relief on their bills, capped at £110,000 per business. From 1 April 2026 that relief was replaced by two permanently lower multipliers: 38.2p in the pound for retail premises with a rateable value under £51,000, and 43p for those between £51,000 and £499,999, according to guidance published by local authorities including Camden and BCP councils.
The same date brought the 2026 revaluation, which reset every rateable value in England to rental levels at 1 April 2024. For a small independent on County Road the arithmetic is straightforward: a lower multiplier on a rateable value that reflects 2024 rents. For the landlord of a vacated 20,000 sq ft unit the arithmetic is worse, because empty property relief runs out after three months and the full liability then falls due on a building with no tenant, which is one reason large units on secondary parades are often re-let cheaply or split.
What comes next for B&M and the high street?
The next fixed date for B&M is 12 November, when it publishes interim results for the 26 weeks to 26 September. Investors will look for evidence that the Q1 like-for-like decline reversed over the summer, for any comment on the Wigan format test, and for updated opening and closing numbers. Any further UK closures would normally be disclosed in that statement, so County Road traders will learn on that morning whether their store was a one-off or the start of a list.
The other fixed date is the Autumn Budget on 28 October. Retail trade bodies including the British Retail Consortium and the British Independent Retailers Association have been lobbying for further business rates changes, and the government has already confirmed a 20% rates reduction for pubs and live music venues from April 2027. Whether shops get anything similar is the single most important policy question for a parade like County Road.
The wider trading picture is soft. The BRC-KPMG Retail Sales Monitor for August showed total UK retail sales up just 0.7% year on year in the four weeks to 29 August, down from 1.3% in July, with food up 2.6% and non-food down 0.8%, the weakest categories being furniture and household appliances. Industry footfall data reported this month put high street visits down 3.1% year on year in August while retail parks rose 1.0%, which is precisely the shift B&M’s estate strategy is following, and precisely the shift that leaves a Victorian parade in Walton with a 20,000 sq ft gap.
Frequently asked questions
When is the B&M on County Road, Walton, closing?
B&M has confirmed the County Road store in Walton, Liverpool, will close on 6 November 2026. The date was given in a company statement reported by the Express on 10 September and by Retail Gazette on 11 September. The store will trade as normal until then.
Why is B&M closing the County Road store?
B&M has not given a reason. Its statement says only that it remains committed to Liverpool and that customers can shop at nearby stores. The closure fits a 2026 pattern in which B&M is moving into larger units with garden centres and refitting stores that remain, while the County Road unit has two bigger B&M stores within about a mile.
Where is the nearest B&M to County Road once it closes?
B&M names Great Homer Street and Utting Avenue as the nearest alternatives, each about a mile away, and both have a garden centre and a larger range than County Road. Clayton Square in the city centre, Bootle New Strand and The Rock in Birkenhead are the other Merseyside branches listed by Retail Gazette.
Will County Road B&M staff lose their jobs?
According to the company statement, no. B&M said all colleagues affected by the 6 November closure will be offered employment at other local B&M stores in the surrounding area. The retailer has not published how many people work at the branch.
Is B&M closing other stores in 2026?
County Road is the only outright closure B&M has announced this autumn. In August it closed its Carmarthen town-centre store but reopened a larger one a week later at Parc Pensarn Retail Park, and it shut its Sunderland Hylton Riverside store for five days to complete an expansion. Nationally B&M opened 64 gross new stores in FY26 and 33 net, and it still targets around 1,200 UK stores long term.
Is the closure connected to Everton leaving Goodison Park?
B&M has not said so, and there is no evidence linking the two. Everton’s men’s team moved from Goodison to the Hill Dickinson Stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock ahead of the 2025/26 season, and County Road traders had warned about lost matchday trade. A discount store’s sales depend on weekly household shopping rather than fixtures, but the parade now loses a weekday anchor on top of the matchday crowds.
How is B&M performing financially?
In the year to 28 March 2026 B&M grew revenue 3.6% to £5.8 billion, but adjusted EBITDA fell 25.9% to £459 million and pre-tax profit fell 47.3% to £227 million, with UK like-for-like sales flat. In the first quarter of the new year UK like-for-like sales fell 2.3%. Chief executive Tjeerd Jegen has described 2026/27 as a period of investment in stores. Interim results are due on 12 November 2026.
What is the B&M “store of the future”?
It is a new format B&M launched at its 24,449 sq ft Worthington Way store in Wigan on 28 August 2026. It adds a frozen food section, self-checkouts, customer assistance buttons, staff headsets, new signage and a redesigned layout. B&M will test customer reaction there before deciding which features to roll out to other stores.
Where this leaves Walton
The County Road closure is a small line in B&M’s accounts and a large one for a Liverpool parade that has spent five years and £1 million of public money trying to reinvent itself after the stadium it grew up beside emptied out. Shoppers will adapt, because the alternative stores are close and better stocked. The independents who stay will need the council, the landlord and the Budget to move faster than they did for the last empty unit.