Employees of the collapsed BHS stores chain took to the streets of the capital on Monday night, illuminating some of London's best-known landmarks with eye-catching projections of a huge Union Jack flag.
Emblazoned with the slogan #SaveBHS, the projections lit up Marble Arch, Blackfriars Bridge and Wellington Arch as well as the 88-year-old company’s headquarters on Marylebone Road.
Behind the campaign is BHS’s marketing manager, Tony Holdway, who is orchestrating a social media campaign to drum up support for the 164-store retail chain and its 11,000 employees. “We do not intend to go down without a fight,” he said.
But plans to illuminate London’s best-known landmark, Big Ben, fell foul of the authorities, with a House of Commons spokeswoman later explaining that the beaming of any “unapproved messaging” onto the Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben’s official name) would compromise its symbolic status.
Earlier in the day, inside the House of Commons, BHS was very much on the agenda, however, as MPs embarked on their inquiries into the collapse of the retailer.
Administrators were called in at BHS a fortnight ago, just a year after the heavily-indebted business was sold by billionaire Sir Philip Green for a token £1. It is the biggest High Street failure since Woolworths closed its doors in 2008 and has put some 11,000 jobs at risk.
Green has agreed to go to Westminster next month to attend a hearing into the company’s collapse but on Monday it was the turn of the Pensions Regulator and the pensions lifeboat, the Pension Protection Fund, to be grilled over BHS’s £571 million pension deficit.
Under questioning by MPs on the work and pensions and business committees, which are conducting a joint investigation, the head of the Pensions Regulator, Lesley Titcomb, admitted that the first they’d heard of the controversial sale of BHS last year was when they read about it in the newspapers.
Titcomb said that the regulator had held discussions with the scheme’s trustees, who are being called to Westminster for a separate grilling ahead of Green’s appearance next month. But, she told MPs: “They discussed a number of propositions with us. The next we heard they’d sold the business.”
The inactivity of the regulator over BHS is all the more alarming given the fact that alarm bells had been sounded about its pension problems back in 2012, when BHS revealed it intended to make up the deficit - then £200 million - over 23 years. This is a far longer period than most deficit reduction programmes, which are typically between seven and 12 years.
Titcomb admitted the regulator had “concerns” over the scheme several years before the retailer’s collapse, but only launched an investigation after the business was sold to Retail Acquisitions, the consortium headed by the thrice-bankrupt former racing driver Dominic Chappell.
‘Anti-avoidance’ investigation
Its “anti-avoidance” investigation, which is looking into whether any of the retailer’s former owners walked away from their pension scheme liabilities - has been under way for a year now and Titcomb said it was unlikely to reach a conclusion before the end of this year.
Had the regulator known of the sale of the business, steps would have been taken to ensure the pension scheme - now being taken on by the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) - was securely funded, Titcomb said. The PPF’s liability for the BHS scheme is put at £275 million, but could rise further.
MPs were not impressed with the lack of action. “When you go after someone who has a fund which doesn’t have enough money in it, your first question is ‘How much can you afford?’ You don’t sound like much of a regulator,” one committee member told her, in a foretaste of the treatment that is likely to be meted out to Green next month.
Meanwhile, there was some hope for BHS employees last night (Tuesday) as it emerged that five bids for the bulk of the business had been submitted by the 5pm deadline set by the administrators, Duff & Phelps.
In total, as many as 50 companies are thought to have expressed an interest in some of the stores to add to their own chains but a buyer for the whole business would safeguard jobs for the vast majority of its 11,000 employees.
Potential buyers include Mike Ashley's Sports Direct, the furniture chain Ikea and the discount retailer B&M. Ikea has made clear it is not interested in buying the whole business but only certain locations, which it is keen to convert to its new smaller sized 'order and collect' outlets.
Fiona Walsh is business editor of theguardian.com
