‘Sad times’ as popular gym to close its doors for good after making ‘every effort’ to stay open

A POPULAR gym has announced it is closing its doors for good after making "every effort" to stay open.

Nuffield Fitness and Wellbeing Centre in Crawley Leisure Park will close for good on Thursday, November 30.

In a statement on its website, the gym said it was closing for "reasons outside of our control".

It read: "The landlord of the building in which our Crawley Central centre is located has plans to redevelop the site, and therefore the club will regrettably be closing permanently.

"Every effort to negotiate with the landlord was made, however, unfortunately we need to honour their wishes to proceed."

Members will continue to have full access to gym's facilities and classes will run as normal until the date of closure.

Nuffield Health currently has 113 fitness and wellbeing centres across the UK.

Gym members have take to social media to share their sadness over the closure of the Crawley site.

One Facebook user said: "My second home for over ten years now. Going to miss it and the lovely people."

Another added: "So sad. My daughter will sadly lose her little job which she loves. All the staff are so lovely. I really wish them all well."

A third wrote: "Been a big part of my families lives for a long time. So sad to see another part of our history going."

While one Facebook user simply said: "Sad times."

Gym-goers will have their final direct debit collected on November 1 and proceeding payments will be cancelled automatically.

After the closure, the nearest Nuffield Health centre for locals will be in Turners Hill.

More high street closures

The retail sector has been hit hard in recent years due to the growth of online shopping, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

At the same time the cost of living has been rising, leading to shoppers cutting back on non-essential spending.

Brick and mortar stores have also seen a lack of footfall due to consumer habits switching to online shopping.

Beloved discounter Wilko is to close all of its stores by October, with thousands of workers set for redundancy, after it collapsed into administration.

Familiar brands like M&Co and Paperchase also went under closing all of their UK shops earlier this year.

House of Fraser is set to pull the shutters down on one of its stores in its latest round of closures.

Although, some chains have managed to defy high street troubles and are actually set to open new shops.

These include discount chains like Poundland which is set to open 15 shops in the coming weeks and Greggs which is aiming to open 150 new sites this year.

Meanwhile, we've also rounded up all the high street chains closing sites in September.

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