Boots (including Boots in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, as well as Boots Opticians) today announces that it is implementing a plan to address the rapidly changing needs of its customers and patients and continue the transformation of its businesses. This will develop a platform to drive continued growth over the coming years and beyond to create continued long-term sustainable returns.
 
Boots aims to build on its recent performance, and the purpose of this plan is to evolve the existing models across key areas of priority to bring together and simplify how resources are used, to run the businesses more efficiently and to deliver increased levels of care and service to patients and customers. Investment will focus on such areas over the coming years, to ensure Boots continues to serve communities through its store network and as a true omni-channel retailer. These areas of focus include:
 

 
Boots is simplifying the structure of support functions in order to provide a better level of service for stores and allow for a 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. However, additional resources will also be required in some areas, such as digital and the delivery of the new customer offer. A formal consultation with affected colleagues will begin in due course.
 
This plan is part of the expanded Walgreens Boots Alliance cost restructuring programme, set out in the Company’s second quarter financial results announcement and referenced in the New York analyst event both in April 2015.
 
Simon Roberts, President of Boots, said: “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.
 
“Together with my leadership team, I believe this plan will make Boots even better for our customers and drive sustainable future growth.  We also remain fully committed to our presence in Nottingham, which has been the home of Boots since the very beginning.
 
“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”.