One of Swindon’s leading blue chip companies, Early Learning Centre, is shutting down virtually all its operations in the town following its takeover last year by Mothercare, with a substantial loss of jobs.

The company is vacating two major office and warehouse buildings at South Marston, amounting to more than 300,000 sq ft. Mothercare refused to comment on the move, despite a reported statement last year from chief executive Ben Gordon that the head office would remain in Swindon.

Mr Gordon said then that he expected to continue to trade ELC’s 210 high-street stores as a stand-alone business. “It’s going to be quite important to keep the brands quite distinctive,” he said. ELC, founded in 1974, ran up losses of £9.8m on sales of £186m in the year to May 2006.

The £85m cash and shares takeover was Mothercare's biggest acquisition. ELC was put up for sale by bookshop entrepreneur Tim Waterstone along with joint owners Rhone Capital and Beano publisher DC Thomson.

The childcare retailer Mothercare posted a 52 per cent drop in pre-tax profits after its acquisition of the Early Learning Centre chain. The profits slide to £6.1m was said to be largely due to the cost of integrating the two companies and first-half losses from ELC, which makes most money between October and December in the run-up to Christmas.

Mothercare's underlying pre-tax profits rose 10.7 per cent to £13.4m on the back of a 24 per cent increase in sales to £328.5m in the six months to 21 October.

At the time of a management buyout just over five years ago, Early Learning employed around 200 people in Swindon and around 2,000 people in 265 retail outlets around the country.

This week, Mothercare declined to say how many redundancies would be made in Swindon, or to provide any details on the closure of the two buildings in the town.

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