MYSTERY surrounds the sudden closure of a shoe shop at The Broadway shopping centre.

Jeff Bains Shoes shut its doors at the Bradford city centre shopping centre on Saturday, it has emerged.

The store has been empty since Sunday morning, with no signs on the front to inform shoppers if it would re-open.

In terms of closures, it joins baked potato seller Spud U Like, which announced it was shutting in June this year.

But an employee of another shop in The Broadway, who did not want to be named, said the manager of the centre’s Jeff Bains store told her on Saturday that the shop was shutting and would re-open in a week’s time.

She added there were a number of signs on the glass-fronted shop which read ‘All Stock Must go’ and the manager was taking down shelves as people shopped at the store.

She said: “The shop had a sign on it saying all stock must go.

“I came back yesterday and it was gone.

“The manager told me the shop would be shut for a week and would be coming back.

“It’s a strange situation.”

A Broadway spokesman said he was unable to provide a comment on the shop’s status at this stage.

Jeff Bains Shoes has other outlets in Birmingham, Burton-on-Trent, Derby, Merry Hill in the West Midlands and Walsall.

No spokesman from Birmingham-based Jeff Bains was available to comment yesterday when approached by the Telegraph & Argus.

Val Summerscales, secretary of the Bradford Chamber of Trade, expressed her disappointment that the retailer had decided to shut in the city, but added she felt confident the unit would be filled up at the centre.

She said: “It’s disappointing that the shop has closed and so soon after it had opened there. It’s also disappointing that it has shut as it was a new name to Bradford.

“But The Broadway is nearly 100 per cent full and these hiccups happen to new operations like The Broadway.

“I’m sure The Broadway will have alternative types of businesses to balance it out.”

Meyer Bergman, which owns the shopping centre, confirmed in May that it was in talks with a number of high-profile retailers and that it would expect the remaining few units would be signed up in the coming months.