Chippenham staff upset by email sacking (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Lingerie firm bosses told trio to just leave

3:40pm Friday 20th January 2012 in Calne

From left, La Senza manager Melanie Jaggard, supervisor Kate Jallow and Zoe Dunn, were told to clear the store before receiving a letter letting them go

Furious staff at Chippenham’s doomed La Senza store have been left without a job after being told not to return to the lingerie store.

Manager Melanie Jaggard, her daughter and single mum of two Kate Jallow, and Zoe Dunn, of Calne, were told to clear the store by bosses, before receiving an email saying they would not have jobs to return to.

They are three of six employees who have been left without work as their store is one of 86 that have closed around the country.

Mrs Jaggard, who lives in Bristol, said she worked throughout the Christmas period but has not received any of the overtime pay she is owed.

“It’s disgusting how we’ve been treated,” she said.

“I have been working here for six years. I hoped I would work here until I retired.

“We came in on Monday morning, as usual, opened the emails and we had one that just told us not to open the shop.

“It didn’t say anything at all about redundancies. We stayed all day packing the store up on the instructions of the head office.

“Everyone was asking what was happening, and no one told us anything. We sat around doing nothing from 2.30pm until 6pm as all the stock had been cleared away.

“Then we got an email saying we were being made redundant with immediate effect.”

Ms Jallow, who lives in Bristol with her children aged two and ten, said she had been left devastated.

“It’s just awful – I have two children and once my rent has been paid, I don’t know what we’re going to do for money,” she said.

“Even if I could get a job today, I’d still be struggling to put food on the table later this month. It’s so frightening to think about.”

The trio said the store was making more than £4,000 a day in the Christmas period and profits were even being made during the sales.

“No one was told anything, so we don’t know where the money has gone,” said Mrs Jaggard.

“How does a company go from making a big profit to being closed down in two years? We knew we were in trouble, but it is a national chain and we expected to be treated better.”

The chain was bought by Lion Capital in 2008, which has lost £50m in equity now it has been sold via a pre-pack administration to Middle Eastern investors.

Around 60 of the stores have been saved, but more than half will now be closed.

Miss Dunn, who lives in Poppy Close, says she feels lucky to have landed a new job at Leigh Delamere services.

“I’m really pleased to be working there,” she said.

“But it was a huge shock and really upsetting when we were told to leave. It’s not about the money – it’s about the way we’ve been treated.”

Richard Fleming, David Standish and Rob Croxen, restructuring partners at KPMG, were yesterday appointed joint administrators to La Senza UK.