A MAJOR furniture warehouse is closing down with the loss of a dozen jobs.

Landmark Home Furnishing, on the Sackville Trading Estate in Hove, is to close at the end of the month, its directors confirmed today.

It is one of four major furniture retailers within a few hundred yards on a site bordering Sackville Road and the Old Shoreham Road.

Landmark has been fighting for business against Vokins Furniture Centre and Furniture Village, which opened recently on the site of the old Wadham Kennings, and DFS on the nearby Goldstone Retail Park.

The company will shut tomorrow for two days to prepare a closing down sale which begins on Friday. It will shut its doors for the last time on October 31.

Hove Labour councillor Simon Battle said Brighton and Hove Council should now be wary about giving planning

permission for another furniture retailer on the site.

He said: "With four of them there the competition for business was fierce and it was inevitable that one of them would go.

"It is very sad from the point of view of the people who have lost their jobs, but at the end of the day there was not enough of a market to sustain four furniture warehouses."

Calls to Landmark's head office in Southampton were referred to group chief executive Malcolm Parkinson, who was not available for comment last night.

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