Following a new leadership team being appointed in January, Dobbies has achieved six consecutive months of year-on-year sales growth.

Graeme Jenkins, who was appointed as CEO earlier this year, said: “Dobbies has delivered a strong trading performance so far this year. This gives us a solid foundation for growing the business, organically and through further acquisitions.

“Our trading performance is a credit to the team who have focused on understanding what Dobbies customers want and in turn re-establishing our range authority. We have also started to invest across the estate to expand our offer and improve our customers’ shopping experience at Dobbies.”

Graeme Jenkins was speaking as the company filed it Annual Report and Financial Statements.

Here are the main points of the report:

• Sales for the 12 months to 25 February 2018 were £148.3m, 1.5% lower year-on-year.
• Range changes implemented during the second half of the year led to lower footfall and conversion, particularly during the Christmas trading period.
• Profit before tax of £5.1m was £3.3m lower year-on-year, principally due to one-off items in the prior year.
• A new leadership team was appointed in January 2018 and a strategic review was undertaken.
• In the current financial year, trading has benefited from this review with six consecutive months of year-on-year sales growth of over 11%.
• Six new garden centres were acquired in October and are trading in line with expectations.

See our photos from Dobbies Peterborough last week and Dobbies Huntingdon where there team are hard at work implementing the change over from Wyevale to Dobbies.