Home improvement and garden retailer Bunnings Warehouse officially opened its doors in Chichester today (4 January 2018), creating over 20 full and part time jobs.

The new store, which is on the site of the former Homebase in Discovery Park, is over 80,000 square feet and offers customers more than 30,000 leading home improvement and garden products from a wide range of global market-leading brands. Other services include everything from paint mixing to key cutting, a garden centre, timber cutting and in-store D.I.Y. Workshops.

Bunnings’ team members have already been busy ahead of today’s store opening, helping with projects in the Chichester area. These included donating bikes to Love Your Hospital, painting the building and cleaning a decking area for Aldwick Royal British Legion and raising flower beds for the Apuldram Centre.

Chichester Complex Manager, Damon Kemp, said: “All our team members have worked really hard to get the store ready for opening and have undertaken many hours of training to make sure we have the expertise to help customers with home or garden projects.”

To celebrate the opening, Sarah Ayton OBE, double Olympic gold-winning sailor, is joining a welcome breakfast for team members.

Ms Ayton said: “I’ve had a great time opening my local Bunnings Warehouse this morning and

meeting the team members. I’m sure that the store will be a huge success.”

The store will host two weekends of events on 6-7 and 13-14 January, where customers can enjoy a range of family activities including the famous Bunnings Sausage Sizzle, face-painting, balloon modelling and even join Chase & Marshall from Paw Patrol for a Story Time session.

Bunnings, the leading retailer of home improvement and garden products in Australia and New Zealand, acquired Homebase for £340million in February 2016 – and plans to invest a further £500million building a new Bunnings Warehouse business in the UK and Ireland over a five-year plus timeframe.