A BUTCHERS which opened a store in York last year will close with the loss of six jobs.

National chain Crawshaws, which has stores in Northern England and across the Midlands opened in Auster Road at Clifton Moor, has revealed that it attempted to raise emergency funding to stay afloat but the bid was unsuccessful.

Administrator, Hunter Kelly, said York is one of 35 stores to shut nationwide.

Hunter Kelly, said: “Unfortunately it was necessary to immediately close 35 stores in mainly high street locations that were no longer viable, which resulted in 354 redundancies nationally.

“Despite the new management team’s best efforts, it was not possible to raise additional investment to restructure the business by reducing the number of high street stores and expanding its successful factory shop format and in store SPAR butchery offering.”

They said 19 of the 54 stores will remain open and a rescue deal could safeguard the remaining 261 Crawshaw staff.

The collapse of the company came after several years of financial losses.

According to its latest set of results for the six months to July 29, the group posted revenue of £21.6 million and a pre-tax loss of £1.7 million.

Meanwhile The Press reported last week that York's last tax office is to close in January, with the loss to the city of 30 remaining jobs.

HMRC employed almost 200 people in York ten years ago, at two offices in St Saviourgate and Piccadilly.

The former closed some years ago and there is now only Swinson House in Piccadilly, where about 30 members of staff still worked at the end of September.