Morrisons is closing more stores and blaming Rachel Reeves’s Budget for it
Key Points
- Morrisons is closing a further round of company-owned Morrisons Daily convenience stores, all former McColl's sites from the 2022 acquisition
- The supermarket blames employer NIC and National Living Wage rises confirmed in Rachel Reeves's first Budget for tipping the stores into unviable territory
- The closures come on top of earlier 2025 cuts of 17 Daily stores and 52 in-store cafés
- Morrisons is continuing to grow its franchised Daily estate, with more than 120 opened in 2025 and hundreds more planned in 2026
- The Treasury has not commented on the announcement; specific store locations and redundancy numbers will follow during consultation
Morrisons is closing a further round of stores and pinning the decision on Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s Autumn Budget.
The supermarket confirmed it will shut a number of company-owned Morrisons Daily sites, all of them former McColl’s stores acquired in the 2022 takeover, after concluding the locations are loss-making and cannot be returned to profit.
Affected staff have been placed at risk of redundancy and a formal consultation will begin shortly. The closures sit on top of earlier 2025 cuts that saw Morrisons shut 17 Daily stores, 52 in-store cafés, and a range of counter services.
“The performance of all company owned stores across our Convenience business is subject to continuous review,” the supermarket said in a statement
. It said the review had identified stores from the McColl’s acquisition whose performance had been “challenged for a number of years” despite remedial action, and that the situation had been “exacerbated in more recent years by significant cost increases resulting from government policy choices.”
The two policy choices Morrisons names are the increase in employer National Insurance Contributions and the rise in the National Living Wage, both confirmed in Reeves’s first Budget.
Retailers have repeatedly warned that the combined effect has compressed margins on lower-volume stores to the point of unviability, and Extended Producer Responsibility fees on packaging have layered further cost into 2026.
The result for shoppers in affected catchments is the loss of a local convenience option, with no replacement site announced.
The company said its convenience growth plans for the year remain intact through its franchised Morrisons Daily model rather than company-owned sites.
Morrisons opened more than 120 franchised Daily stores in 2025 and has signalled room for hundreds more in 2026.
The contrast points to a structural shift inside the convenience arm, with the franchise estate expanding while the former McColl’s footprint contracts.
The Treasury has not commented specifically on the Morrisons announcement.
The supermarket sector has spent much of the past year publicly criticising the Budget cost increases, with reports earlier this year that ministers had asked grocers to voluntarily freeze prices on key items in return for regulatory relief, a proposal former Sainsbury’s boss Justin King described as misguided.
Specific store locations and total redundancy numbers are expected to emerge during the consultation period.
