GLOBAL office giant Regus looks poised to move in to the former TJ Hughes building in a Cheshire town.

The store at Green Oaks Shopping Centre, Widnes, recently closed its doors for the final time, with company bosses saying it had been unable to agree a new lease.

But plans have now been submitted for a Regus shared office space at the site, with tenancies already being advertised online.

Founded in Belgium in 1989, Regus provides co-working offices, hot desks, meeting rooms for hire and virtual offices. It has more than 4,000 sites around the world from Auckland and Toronto, to Cape Town and Kuala Lumpur.

A planning application has been submitted to Halton Borough Council for new signs on the outside of the building, and the company itself is already advertising to prospective tenants.

Its marketing website states: "The birthplace of the UK’s chemical industry, Widnes has a well-established industrial base and thriving service sector. Join a dynamic community of business service providers, IT specialists and logistics experts with flexible, furnished office space in this fast-growing business hub."

The serviced office sector has seen a boom in recent years fuelled partly by the growth of sole traders and start-ups, along with established companies looking to rent desks and meeting rooms - without having to incur the cost of renting or buying an entire building. Regus’s larger clients currently include the likes of Amazon, Uber and Linkedin.

TJ Hughes itself was founded by Thomas Hughes in Liverpool back in 1912, growing to become a national chain before entering administration in 2011, which resulted in widespread store closures.

The Widnes branch had been one of just six at the time to get a reprieve after being taken over by new owners, with 50 jobs being saved. The company said it is planning to open a new store in the Golden Square Shopping Centre in Warrington.