Monkhouse currently has a monopoly on branded school uniform items for many Bristol schools. With three branches in the city, parents have no choice where to shop for these items as only one branch will sell items for any school. 

In-store stock is limited and online order lead time is 14 working days, meaning orders placed after the third week in the summer holidays aren’t being guaranteed to arrive before the start of the new year. 

The Stoke Gifford branch has been closed without notice when those with booked appointments have arrived. The same branch has only one operational till for both orders and processing payments. Paying for items this week has taken over 50 minutes.

This supplier has a history of delays in orders.Recent posts on social media saw parents sharing stories of entire online orders being delayed because of a single missing item - 7 or 8 weeks has been mentioned.

Parents currently have no other choice to purchase new uniform, as schools contribute to grant this supplier a monopoly on branded items. 

I encourage Bristol schools to rethink their award of contracts to this supplier, or at the very least to engage with a second supplier to encourage competition.