We have continued our efforts to ensure that all our stores are open when people want to shop. We empowered our local store managers to make the decisions for individual stores to ensure that we operate the right hours for each location. Over the past year 400 more stores started to trade on Sundays and some selected bank holidays. Many now open earlier and close later.
The last year has also seen our biggest store opening programme for 10 years - with the bulk sited on edge-of-town retail parks. We now have 112 edge-of-town stores - 15 per cent of our space - and will open more as we locate the right sites.
We have had some encouraging developments here. Our edge-of-town stores that have been open for more than a year are showing good second year growth of over 20 per cent - a performance which is ahead of our targets.
LINK: But we have also been working hard behind the scenes
