Families left £300 a year better off as Tesco joins price wars

FAMILIES are saving more than £300 a year on food compared to two years ago thanks to supermarket price cuts.

A fierce price war triggered by the rise of German supermarket chains Aldi and Lidl has led to falling food costs across the high street for more than two years.

Bosses at Tesco said yesterday that its prices are down by 6 per cent compared to two years ago.

Based on a conservative estimate of a weekly food shopping bill of £100 this equates to a saving of more than £300 a year.

Many families are making even bigger savings by switching away from the ‘big four’ – Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons – and shopping at the discount chains.

Tesco is funding price cuts by cutting thousands of office staff, moving its headquarters and scrapping the building of new

‘Great news for consumers’

hypermarkets. It is also slashing the number of its stores which open for 24 hours a day.

Some 50 outlets, many of them the large Extra stores, have already abandoned 24 hour opening or are about to do so.

On prices, chief executive Dave Lewis, who took over Tesco in 2014, said: ‘We are more competitive across our offer. Prices are more than 6 per cent lower than two years ago.’

Earlier this week the British Retail Consortium said food prices are down by 1.3 per cent in the past year, which is a record fall.

The BRC’s director general, Helen Dickinson, said: ‘As well as being the highest year-on-year fall we have ever recorded in food, it is only the second time since our Shop Price Index began that food prices have fallen by more than 1 per cent.

‘The record-setting run of shop price deflation continues, which is great news for consumers.’