John Lewis Partnership has been telling some of its landlords that it is planning to withhold 20% of its fourth quarter service charge.
The retailer has told landlords that the charges have become too high, according to the BBC.
The move to reduce its property costs follows the business recording its first ever loss, for the six months to 27 July 2019.
It has since announced plans to restructure its management teams, which will result in the loss of around 75 senior management head-office roles. It currently has 225 senior managers.
John Lewis hopes this will save it around £100m over time.
In a statement, John Lewis said: “At a time when we are doing everything we can to reduce our cost base, we have unfortunately been faced with regular increases to the service charges we pay for some of our shops in shopping centres.
“Over the last three years we have seen an increase in service charges of 20% and these continued increases are simply not acceptable, particularly in the absence of strenuous efforts by landlords to work collaboratively with us to reduce these costs.
“We are investing more in our current shop estate than ever before to do everything we can to encourage customers to grow footfall to our shops and we hope that our landlords will support us in continuing to do this.”
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