Buckingham Bingo has shut a club in the Didsbury area of Manchester as it continues with a restructuring programme to try to secure its future.

The closure of the underperforming Parrs Wood Centre bingo hall leaves Manchester-based Buckingham with a total of 11 sites, three of which are in Greater Manchester – at Middleton, Old Trafford and Walkden.

Other aspects of the group’s overhaul include the renegotiation of onerous leases and a drive to boost its online bingo offer.

All 27 staff at the Parrs Wood hall, which opened in 2000, were offered redeployment to other Greater Manchester clubs, but only three accepted. In a statement, the chain said the remaining 24 employees took redundancy or found other jobs.

The job losses leave Buckingham with a total of 350 staff.

The company added: “The closure follows a combination of three factors that questioned the club’s economic future and which have had a severe affect on other licensed bingo clubs throughout the UK.

“The impact of the smoking ban, which has reduced the numbers of people attending bingo clubs, has been aggravated by the ongoing recession and a government tax increase on bingo through the gross profit tax.

“Buckingham Bingo is responding to this by consolidating and restructuring the company to secure a longer-term future for the rest of our clubs and better equip us to move forward from what has been a difficult economic period for most businesses.”

Buckingham Bingo, the north’s biggest independent chain with over 1.7m attendances each year, was founded in 1970 by Panico Panayi.

He sold the business to venture capital firm Alchemy Partners in 2005 for around £90m.

However, the introduction of, and subsequent increases to, the gross profit tax to replace bingo duty, and the smoking ban from 2007, took their toll.

The latest accounts for Full House Holdings, Buckingham’s parent company, covered the year to March 2008 and showed pre-tax losses of £88.7m – largely due to impairment charges – and a warning over the firm’s status as a going concern.

Revenues were down from £47m to £33.4m.

Alchemy effectively wrote off most of its stake in the group during 2008, losing control of the business to its bankers Barclays in return for a debt waiver.

Group chief executive Andy Cunningham said: “Our consolidating and restructuring has included an ongoing review of underperforming clubs, renegotiating onerous leases and equipping Buckingham Bingo for what has been a much better start to this financial year.

“Our 2009 figures are down, but we are no different to any other similar operator in this leisure sector.

“We do, however, have some very large and profitable clubs and our online bingo performs very well.

“While adverse weather affected business in January, it was encouraging in February and March.”