Morrisons Grows Small: 400 New Convenience Shops by 2025

Morrisons, a major UK supermarket chain, has announced plans to open 400 additional Morrisons Daily convenience stores, with a target of reaching 2,000 locations by 2025. This expansion is part of the company’s strategy to compete with discount retailers Aldi and Lidl.

The decision follows a successful quarter for Morrisons, with a 4.1% increase in like-for-like sales, excluding fuel, and total sales rising by 3.7% to £3.8 billion. The company attributes this growth to its focus on three strategic areas: commercial excellence, operations optimization, and new value creation.

CEO Rami Baitiéh highlighted the positive impact of the Aldi and Lidl Price Match initiative, which was introduced earlier this year. This initiative aims to boost consumer confidence in Morrisons’ pricing competitiveness. Baitiéh also noted that customer feedback has been instrumental in shaping the company’s strategies, particularly regarding product availability and the loyalty scheme.

In addition to expanding its convenience store network, Morrisons recently completed the £2.5 billion sale of its petrol filling station business and acquired 38 convenience stores in the Channel Islands from Sandpiper. Currently, Morrisons operates 1,600 convenience stores across the UK.

Morrisons is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year, marking the milestone with the launch of the Basket Bonus scheme. This loyalty program offers customers the chance to win points, rewards, and free products, with a weekly opportunity for some to become More Points Millionaires, receiving a £1,000 bonus to spend in-store or online.

The company’s expansion and loyalty initiatives underscore its commitment to enhancing customer satisfaction and strengthening its market position amidst growing competition in the retail sector.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

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Post-Brexit: data protection
Card processor sends sensitive data to wrong address
24 August 2022

Worldline SA subsidiary Payone GmbH has been accused of breaching data protection rules after it sent sensitive employee payroll information to the wrong address by accident. The Worldline Group holdS a 60% stake in the Frankfurt based company who have a small UK market presence.

In June 2021, one of Payone GmbH’s ex UK employees (the data subject) received a “potential data breach notification” from the firm advising him that his salary, National Insurance data, nationality (Special Category Data) was amongst various bits of information sent to an incorrect home address.

This included personal information such as the former employees name, age and address.  It also included details such as the date of birth and the amount of annual work bonus he received in his bank account amongst other identifiable data.

Payone GmbH confirmed that this document was sent out in error following an employee making a mistake when re-entering data processed by their third-party payroll provider.  The error arose when the employee was fulfilling an Article 15 GDPR request. The error was spotted by the data subject when he noticed in an email version of the document that the postal address was incorrect. An attempt to notify Payone GmbH of the error went in vain as the document was already irretrievably despatched.

The data subject was alarmed with the incident which exposed him to the possibility of fraudulent activity, amidst reasonable fears his data could end up on the dark web and used by criminals.  Habitually resident in the UK he complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in June 2021. He similarly raised the concern in Germany via The Hessian Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (HBDI).

The ICO reprimanded Payone GmbH for the error in their final decision letter.
Similarly, the HBDI cited a violation of Article 5(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) relating to integrity and confidentiality.

The ICO stated in their July 2021 findings that Payone GmbH, “should take steps to ensure that all personal data records are accurate and up to date. Holding inaccurate information, such as addresses, does increase the risk of personal data breaches and poses risks to the security of information”.

The HBDI confirmed in their October 2021 findings that Payone GmbH had taken remedial action. They concluded that a monetary fine would not be imposed on Payone GmbH as they had taken technical and organisational steps in response to the data breach. Data subjects could now request their data in an autonomous portal.

The GDPR, which came into effect in 2018, gave the Information Commissioner’s Office greater powers to tackle data breaches. The new ‘UK GDPR’ charts its own course after Brexit whilst seeking to maintain EU GDPR adequacy.  In extreme scenarios, organisations face penalties of up to £20m or 4 per cent of their global worldwide turnover, whichever is more.

In the years prior to GDPR, the ICO fines were capped at £500,000.

The data subject said: “I am just glad I spotted it; they were going to resend the document again to another wrong address. Prior to Brexit the process would have been commenced via the ICO who in turn would liaise with the HBDI on the data subjects’ behalf; but I found myself communicating with both authorities separately which was an additional step but in the end was surprisingly
effective. Unfortunately, Payone GmbH again sent my incorrect address to the
Workers Pension Trust in January 2022, and documents yet again went to the wrong address. In my opinion they have not learned from the first time and my complaint is sitting with the ICO yet again”.

The former employee is pursuing a remedy under Article 82 UK GDPR via
the Court’s of England & Wales.

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