{"id":597833,"date":"2026-05-22T10:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T10:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/597833\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T10:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T10:38:09","slug":"morrisons-planning-to-close-100-stores-in-next-few-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/597833\/","title":{"rendered":"Morrisons planning to close 100 stores in next few months"},"content":{"rendered":"

It also comes after it revealed last month that about 200 jobs were at risk<\/a> at its Bradford headquarters.<\/p>\n

The supermarket chain said its proposal to take the “tough but necessary decision” to close more Morrisons Daily stores meant more staff would be at risk of redundancy and a consultation would start shortly.<\/p>\n

While Morrisons has not confirmed how many staff are at risk of redundancy, it is understood that hundreds of jobs will be affected.<\/p>\n

A Morrisons spokesperson said the business would try to find other opportunities for the staff affected by the closures.<\/p>\n

The chain has around 1,700 Morrisons Daily convenience stores and opened more than 120 franchise stores last year. <\/p>\n

It also did not immediately specify which of those stores it was proposing to close, but said they were ones “whose performance has been challenged for a number of years and which are loss making, despite remedial action”. The affected stores are across the UK.<\/p>\n

“This situation has been exacerbated in more recent years by significant cost increases resulting from government policy choices, which have made returning these stores to profitability even more difficult,” it added.<\/p>\n

It said it had a “robust expansion plan” for 2026, and saw the opportunity to open hundreds more franchise stores in the coming years.<\/p>\n

Many retailers have argued they have been hit with a wave of extra costs since April last year, including increased employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) and higher minimum wages.<\/p>\n

In addition, food and drink companies are now charged for the cost to councils of recycling the packaging of some products, under the government’s Extended Producer Responsibility (ERP) programme.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, inflation has been above the Bank of England’s 2% target for some time. Newly-published inflation figures<\/a> show the annual rate of food price rises was 3% in April – higher than the overall rate of inflation of 2.8%. <\/p>\n

There have been warnings that food inflation in the UK could reach 10% by the end of the year due to the impact of the US-Israel war with Iran.<\/p>\n

This week multiple supermarket sources said the government had urged them to voluntarily freeze the price of key groceries<\/a>, in return for an easing of regulations.<\/p>\n

But the suggestion was met with a furious response by key figures in the industry.<\/p>\n

The former boss of Sainsbury’s Justin King said the British supermarket sector was already highly competitive and it was “hypocritical” for the Treasury to ask supermarkets to cap prices when its policies were contributing to inflation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It also comes after it revealed last month that about 200 jobs were at risk at its Bradford…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-597833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}