THERE’S a familiar name back on Littlehampton High Street, but in Rustington it’s a new face.
WHSmith has returned to Littlehampton almost 40 years after closing its shop on the corner of High Street and Beach Road.
The stationery and newsagent chain has taken over the former British Bookshops and Stationers (BBS) shop a minute’s walk away down the High Street from its old store.
The Littlehampton branch reopened on Saturday, at the same time as the BBS shop in Rustington was back in business, also under the WHSmith name.
The two shops were among 22 BBS stores bought by WHSmith from the ailing Sussex-based BBS chain at the beginning of last month.
At first it was thought that the Littlehampton and Rustington shops would continue trading under the BBS name, but they reopened on Saturday as fully-fledged WHSmith branches, part of a network of more than 1,000 stores, mainly in the UK.
Just over half of these are in town centres and the rest in airports, railway stations, hospitals and motorway service areas.
WHSmith paid just over £1m for the BBS stores it has taken over.
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