Morrisons is to close four of its supermarkets with the potential loss of 400 jobs. The stores in question are in Swindon town centre, Ince, Crawley and Shirley in the West Midlands.

A spokesperson for Morrisons said: “We will now be going through a consultation period at the stores and discussing how to reduce redundancies and where possible redeploy colleagues.”

Already selling more items through deals than any other retailer, Morrisons, according to Kantar data, increased its level of promotion in July as its overall sales fell by 2.7%.  A reduction in the number of items bought per trip also contributed to this decline and its market share fell to 10.1% during the past 12 weeks.

The supermarket undertook a review of its 494 stores earlier in the summer in a bid to cut costs.