Corby’s Lakelands Hospice announces permanent closure of its town centre emporium

They made the announcement on their fundraising Facebook page yesterday evening (Wednesday, July 24) citing ‘massively rising costs’ as the reason why.

The post reads: “Lakelands Emporium in the town centre are very sad to announce that unfortunately we have had to make the decision to close permanently due to massively rising costs.

“We would like to thank all our volunteers for all their hard work and support throughout the many years we have been trading as a shop and a café.

“Also, a big thank you to the wonderful people of Corby for all the support you have given us through donations and being loyal customers at the Emporium.

“Our warehouse on St Marks Road will continue to trade as normal, where our team will be happy to accept your lovely donations and of course you can always grab yourselves a bargain whilst you are there.

“The warehouse opening hours are Monday to Friday 9am till 4pm, Saturday 9am till 2pm.

“Thank you once again for your loyal custom.”

A spokesman for Lakelands Hospice told the Northants Telegraph: “It’s not been a swift or an easy decision because we have a lot of volunteer support there and staff members that we’ve had to consider very carefully and it’s not a position we ever thought to find ourselves in.

“We’re not intending to do away with our retail arm completely, we’re now looking at what the future is for that.

"The warehouse is still very much up and running and our retail team are working on a strategy at the moment to re-envisage that and what it could look like in the future.

“We’ve had a lot of support from a lot of different quarters in the community on the retail side and we hope that people still stick with us and understand that we’re having to re-structure.

“We are very grateful that the council has been able to house the emporium for so long.”

The emporium, located in New Post Office Square, is a charity shop as well as a restaurant and café.

It was officially opened in October 2007, six years after the day care hospice opened in 2001.

The emporium had recently closed on a temporary basis following a fire at the end of June that was caused by a faulty electrical appliance.

Prior to this, it had also only recently received a much-needed refurbishment in April of this year.

For more information about Lakelands Hospice visit their website.