The department store chain’s owner said the owner of its store in the MK Centre in Milton Keynes, Harrods and its managing director Michael Ward, decided to take the store back, resulting in 172 job losses “and a significant amount of vacant space” in the centre.

The retailer said it “made multiple offers to both stay and invest in the entire store, or alternatively to take the part of the store which will now be vacant” but have “yet to receive formal acceptance” from Harrods.

As a result, it said it had been left “with no choice but to announce the closure of the store on January 31” causing a “devastating” number of redundancies.