Denise Welch has been a Loose Women favourite since her debut appearance on the show 25 years ago – but the star has announced her decision to quit so she can embrace a “new chapter of her life”.

The Waterloo Road star, who is also the mother to The 1975 frontman Matty Healy, has enjoyed a career renaissance in recent years and has said that her exit is due to opportunities she’s receiving elsewhere – but it comes amid a period of significant turmoil for the ITV daytime show.

Welch joined the Loose Women panel as a guest in 2001, before becoming a permanent panelist in 2005. She left the show in 2013 amid creative clashes with the show’s producers, but returned in 2018.

On Instagram, Welch said that Loose Women had “been part of mine and my family’s life for well nearly a quarter of a century”. She continued: “I have the most wonderful, wonderful memories, and it’s just that acting has always been my first love, and I think the thing I’m best at.”

She said she’d lately received “the most wonderful opportunities” and that she’s “grabbing them by the you-know-whats and running with it for this new chapter of my life”.

She added: “I’ve shared my life with you, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’m very Marmite, but I cherish all the comments, good or bad, that I’ve had over the years, and I just hope you wish me well.”

“I’ll miss everybody, but I will remain friends with the whole gang because, despite what you might read, we are a happy band of campers.”

Welch’s exit comes amid sustained budget cuts to ITV’s daytime shows, among them Lorraine and Good Morning Britain, which last year resulted in Loose Women losing its studio audience and being cut from an hour slot to 30 minutes.

Nadia Sawalha, one of the show’s panellists, called the cuts “absolutely brutal”, adding: “A lot of my friends and colleagues on this show – and have worked for ITV … for decades – [are] walking around numb with shock and fear about what they are going to do.”

Speaking to The Guardian earlier this year, Welch expressed her sadness about the cuts. “200 people lost their jobs,” she said. “I did the show yesterday and now we’re all together – This Morning, Lorraine and everything – there’s a camaraderie. So, yes, we’re disappointed about some of the things, but change happens.”

The show has rarely left the headlines since, with Sawalha this week claiming she’d been “bullied off” Loose Women due to her support for Palestine.

Former panelist Andrea McLean revealed in May that she applied for a job in Starbucks after leaving the show in 2020 to launch a lifestyle brand that she said “didn’t work”, leaving her with little income.

And various Loose Women stars rushed to the defence of former host Kaye Adams after she was investigated for misconduct by the BBC Scotland, with Adams saying she’d been the subject of “malicious claims”.

Welch shot to fame in the Nineties hit Soldier Soldier and for her role as Rovers Return barmaid turned landlady Natalie Barnes on Coronation Street. She has enjoyed a resurgence in acting work in recent years, including in Russell T Davies hit drama Tip Toe. She will next star in the Channel 4 sitcom Stepping Up and the Channel 5 drama Forever Home, which is adapted from a bestselling book by Graham Norton.

Numerous stars expressed their sadness about Welch’s Loose Women exit in the comments section of her Instagram video, with Carol Vorderman describing it as “an era closing”, adding that Welch was the show’s “beating heart”. Actor Lucy Davis, who this week announced that she had been diagnosed with “incurable” breast cancer, wrote: “Have a fabulous time on this next journey!”

Kaye Adams wrote “you have broken my heart but I shall watch your Den-aissance with love and pride”, while Welch’s husband Lincoln Townley commented: “You’re an incredibly strong, talented, sensational woman, the best is yet to come!”