Boots announced today that it is implementing a plan to address the rapidly changing needs of its customers and patients, to focus on ‘reinventing the customer offer, focused customer engagement and investing in technology’.

The company plans to simplify the structure of support functions in order to provide a better level of service in stores and more focused investment in key areas to drive future growth. This will involve a reduction of around 700 non-store based roles, which Boots expects to achieve through a combination of natural attrition, redeployment, retraining and redundancy. A formal consultation with affected colleagues will begin in due course.

‘Boots has an incredible heritage of delivering care and support to communities across the UK for over 165 years. While we have continued to deliver a solid performance in recent years, despite challenging market conditions, we cannot be complacent and must be stronger and more agile going forward, to meet the fast changing expectations of our customers.’ Said president of Boots, Simon Roberts.

‘We have not taken these decisions lightly, and understand the impact that today’s announcement may have on our colleagues. We are fully committed to doing everything we can to support all our people as we transform Boots and strive to be even better for our customers and patients’.