John Lewis Admits £40m Salary Blunder

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6:55pm UK, Thursday 22 August 2013 John Lewis is one of the UK's biggest High Street chains

The John Lewis Partnership says an error in calculating pay to staff who work Sundays and bank holidays could cost it £40m to fix.

The retailer, which runs department stores and the upmarket Waitrose supermarket chain, said 69,000 of its 85,500 workers - known as partners - will this month receive additional one-off payments reflecting the amounts due to them back dated to 2006.

It said individual payments will vary according to pay and shift patterns, with more than half of the recipients receiving under £120.

John Lewis said the payment error came to light following a recent review of its holiday pay policy.

Its statement said: "It became clear that partners who receive certain additions to pay, such as premiums for working on Sunday or bank holidays, have not been paid correctly under the Working Time Regulations legislation."

John Lewis will account for the £40m, which includes repayments plus associated administration costs, in its half year results due to be published on September 12, but will not deduct the sum from this year's partnership bonus.

It expects future pension liabilities to increase by about £7m as a result of the mistake, while annual pay costs will rise by about 0.5%.

John Lewis said its pay systems had been updated to ensure that all future holiday payments are correct.

Tracey Killen, Director of Personnel, added: "As soon as we established that we were not implementing the Working Time Regulations correctly, we worked quickly to make the repayments to our Partners in a way that is both fair and responsible."

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Tesco Strawberry Blunder Leads To £300k Fine

Tesco has been fined £300,000 for misleading customers after a single shopper complained about a national strawberry price promotion which allegedly netted the chain £2.3m in profits.

The case - brought by Birmingham City Council - related to the cost of 400g punnets of British strawberries sold at a store in the city.

The woman complained they were marked up as "half price" at £1.99 - with an apparent original cost of £3.99 crossed out.

She asked trading standards to investigate because she had never seen the original price and wondered if it was excessive and misleading.

The company admitted a number of offences under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations Act 2008 after failing at an earlier hearing to prevent the council bringing the case on a national basis.

The shopper complained after visiting Tesco's Sheldon branch

Trading Standards told the court that Tesco's offer (at £1.99) fell foul of rules as it ran for 14 weeks, but the strawberries were sold at the higher price of £3.99 for a much shorter length of time.

The case also included a similar promotion when a pot of cream was included in the discount.

Birmingham City Council argued both offers were presented in a way that misled or was likely to deceive the average consumer and the promotions earned the chain £2.32m in additional profits.

The judge described Tesco's turnover as a result of the promotions as "excessive" but agreed that while the supermarket chain had breached customers' trust, it was not the retailer's intention to deliberately mislead them.

In a statement Tesco said: "We apologise sincerely for this mistake, which was made in the summer of 2011.

"We sell over 40,000 products in our stores, with thousands on promotion at any one time, but even one mistake is one too many.

"Since then, to make sure this doesn't happen again, we've given colleagues additional training and reminded them of their responsibilities to ensure we always adhere to the guidelines on pricing."

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