High street moves: Whitbread boss Alison Brittain set to join Dunelm board
Whitbread’s outgoing boss Alison Brittain is set to take on a non-executive director role at homeware brand Dunelm.
Brittain will join the Dunelm board in early September, with it expected that she will succeed Andy Harrison as chair in September 2023.
Brittain announced she was departing from the Premier Inn owner and FTSE-100 business earlier this year, after running the company since 2015.
She navigated the leisure giant through the Covid-19 pandemic and oversaw the sale of its Costa Coffee brand to Coca-Cola in 2019.
“Dunelm is a company I have long admired as a customer and I love that it’s an entrepreneurial, purpose-led business with strong values and lots of ambition,” Brittain said.
She added: “The last two years have reinforced the importance of the home in all of our lives, and I am delighted to be joining a team with such a fabulous track record of focussing on delivering value for customers and a company with fantastic opportunity for future growth.”
Shares in the homeware brand were elevated by more than five per cent in afternoon trading on Thursday.