Boots store
A Boots store in Leicester Reuters

High street pharmacist and cosmetics retailer Boots announced it will cut head office jobs in an effort to turn around its business in a challenging market

Retail Week reported that 700 non-store jobs will be cut, half of which will be at the company's head office in Nottingham. Boots currently employs 55,000 people across the UK.

Boots was bought by US firm Walgreens in a £16bn ($24.3bn, €21.9bn) takeover in December 2014, but the company said the cuts were not related to the merger.

"Boots is simplifying the structure of support functions in order to provide a better level of service for stores and allow for a more focused investment in key areas to drive future growth," the company said in a statement.

The company said that it will execute the job cuts through "natural attrition, redeployment, retraining and redundancy".

It is unknown whether more rounds of cuts will follow but Boots underlined that there were no plans for store closures.

"We can't afford to have a company that's too expensive to run," Boots president Simon Roberts told Retail Week.

In a statement, Roberts added that Boots could not just be satisfied with its solid performance.

He said: "Together with my leadership team, I believe this plan will make Boots even better for our customers and drive sustainable future growth."