Telford Tesco Home Plus store put up for sale

Supermarket giant Tesco is close to winding up its furnishing chain Home Plus – with its Telford branch already on the market, say reports today.

The grocer, which has 2,700 stores in the UK, is keen to exit leases it holds on all 13 of its Home Plus stores following weak sales.

The company and its property adviser Morgan Williams is said to have been reviewing the stores for six months, with the branches on the Forge Retail Park in Telford and one in Staines, Surrey, reportedly already being formally marketed.

The supermarket giant saw billions of pounds wiped from its shares earlier this month after the group admitted that its £500 million price cut campaign had failed to bring in enough customers.

The other Home Plus stores are in Bracknell, Bristol, Chelmsford, Chester, Manchester, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Preston, Southampton and Bromborough on the Wirral.

Chief executive Philip Clarke has pledged to lead a change in the company's expansion strategy, with less focus on massive out-of-town stores, and said it would move faster to restore the company's sales growth at home.

If Tesco is unable to find new tenants, it is likely to leave the stores open, it is reported.

Tesco reported a 'disappointing' 2.3 per cent decline in like-for-like sales excluding VAT and petrol in the six weeks to January 7, which came in below its own expectations.