Norwich Christian bookshop closes its doors

BY KEITH MORRIS

Norwich’s SSG Bookshop and Resource Centre (formerly SPCK) at St Michael-At-Plea will close its doors tomorrow (June 14) for the foreseeable future, after its owner filed for a form of bankruptcy in the USA and its Norwich staff were dismissed.

This follows the closure last week of the Forget-Me-Not Café along with the dismissal of its three staff.

 

SSG Norwich senior assistant Tom Ingram, said: “We are selling off all stock at the moment and will close on Saturday for the foreseeable future. All the temporary staff brought in by the agency have been dismissed as the owner has filed for bankruptcy.”

 

Both the Church Times and the Bookseller are reporting that SSG LLC, which runs the 20 former SPCK bookshops in the UK, told staff and suppliers in an email last week that it had filed for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code in Houston, Texas.

 

SSG employees were told that “payroll, redundancy and other such obligations will only be payable through the bankruptcy court”.

 

The SPCK Resource Centre’s original staff were all fired on February 5 via an e-mail from owners Mark and Phil Brewer from the Saint Stephen the Great Charitable Trust, which bought the SPCK bookshop business in October 2006.   The Norwich shop had since reopened temporarily.

 

John Betts, ex-chairman of Transforming Norwich, has been exploring a co-ordinated initiative to safeguard the future of Christian literature in the centre of Norwich.