Furniture and homeware retailer Dunelm has announced plans to open a new store in Brighton.

Situated at Brighton Retail Park on Carden Avenue, the new store will open in May and takes over a former Next unit. It will create around 35 new jobs.

The new store will feature bedding, kitchenware and haberdashery, alongside Dorma and made-to-measure departments featuring curtains and blinds, with many items being from Dunelm’s Conscious Choice range, which is made from at least 50 per cent more sustainable materials and which now forms 26 per cent of Dunelm’s total range.

The store will also house a textile takeback fixture, allowing customers to return unwanted textile products from any retailer to be purposefully recycled or redistributed, rather than end up in landfill.

Furthermore, Dunelm has also announced the launch of a new three year partnership with national charity Age UK, during which the retailer has pledged to raise a minimum of £2m to help create communities that feel like home for older people.

This includes information, advice and friendship delivered over the phone, across the country, as well as frontline support in communities where Dunelm colleagues and customers live across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, delivered by local Age UKs.

Nick Wilkinson, CEO, at Dunelm, commented: “It is no surprise to me that so many of our colleagues and customers voted for Age UK to be the new Dunelm national charity. As the Home of Homes, we have a natural role to play in building communities that feel like home for older people and everyone for now and generations to come. We have a fantastic opportunity, both nationally and locally, to make a real difference in combatting loneliness and we are really excited by the partnership.”

In other news, Dunelm has also stepped up its commitment to having lower impact operations through an acceleration of its extensive solar panel installation project.

This financial year will see 2,642 panels installed across Dunelm’s portfolio. The installation of photovoltaic (PV) panels has recently been completed at five stores, including 442 at the Bristol store, 410 at Derby, 356 at Romford and 398 at Swansea. 262 panels have also been installed on the roof at Dunelm’s Head Office in Syston, Leicester.

The business has plans to install PV panels across another three sites before the end of June 2024 which, in total, will produce approximately 337,302 kWh’s of electricity as the business continues to decarbonise its operations.