Talking Tesco: UK Competition Commission

Why are we publishing these comments?

Tesco has been reading with interest the third party comments on the Groceries Market Investigation that the Competition Commission has been publishing on its website. Our formal submissions have addressed many of the issues raised by these comments, particularly those of some of the professional lobbying organisations. However, a number of submissions on the Competition Commission's website contain more specific comments about Tesco which we have not covered in our formal submissions.

Some of these specific comments are inaccurate and misleading, and we are providing a series of short notes in order to put the record straight. In the interests of transparency we are today publishing the first such series of notes.

Consumer No.33 Dr Foreman

Dr Foreman states that we opened an Express store, but refused to maintain the Post Office. He does not mention the location of the store he is referring to.

In January 2003 we acquired a number of One Stop stores – many of which contained post offices as part of our acquisition of T&S Stores. The majority of post offices in the One Stop chain are still operating.

We understand that post office counters are often a valued local service so we have maintained around 200 post office counters in our One Stop and Tesco Express stores.

We have also converted many of the One Stop stores we acquired to the Tesco Express format. Express is a different type of convenience store from One Stop with more of a focus on fresh food. The converted stores are very popular but they are, by definition, modest in size and we have had to consider, in each case how we can best meet the convenience shopping needs of local people.

In some cases this has meant a difficult decision on whether to close the post office as part of the conversion, in order to provide an appropriate food offer. In cases where we have made the decision to close the post office counter we have worked hard to relocate the post office facility. We have been successful in most cases in encouraging a new operator in the immediate area to come forward and take over the post office business. To do this, we generally advertise the potential of a relocation, contact local businesses directly to stimulate interest, waive the traditional goodwill payment from the new operator and offer other financial and logistical support.