The supermarket said the affected Morrisons Daily branches have been loss-making for some time.

Jobs are at risk at stores across Oxfordshire, including two in Oxford and Bicester, and one each in Banbury, Carterton, Didcot, Faringdon and Thame.

Morrisons, which runs around 1,700 Daily convenience stores, took them on as part of its £190m rescue of McColl’s in 2022.

The move follows last year’s decision to shut 52 cafés and 17 convenience stores.

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The grocer said the stores’ performance has been squeezed in recent years by rising costs it links to Government policy, including increases to the national living wage and employer National Insurance contributions.

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A Morrisons spokesperson told The Retail Gazette it was proposing the “tough but necessary decision” to close the loss-making stores, with a staff consultation due to begin shortly.

The retailer has not yet revealed which sites are earmarked for closure or exactly how many roles are at risk, but it is thought that hundreds of staff could be affected.

While the company said it would try to find alternative roles for those impacted by the proposed cuts, it insisted it still has a “robust expansion plan” for 2026 and believes there is scope to open hundreds more franchise convenience stores over the coming years.

GIESECKE+DEVRIENT (G+D)

SecurityTech Company

A banknote and a smartphone have more in common than you might think: both fit in a pocket, both get handled millions of times a day, and both are, in their own way, remarkably sophisticated pieces of technology. The difference is in what happens when threats evolve. Smartphones get updates. Banknotes don’t. They have to get it right from the start, and keep getting it right for years, across every climate, every cash register, and every automated sorting machine on the planet. That makes the underlying security architecture all the more impressive. SecurityTech company Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) breaks down five technology layers that turn an everyday banknote into a compact high-security system.

1. Material Technology: Security You Can Feel

Banknote security doesn’t begin at the printing press, instead it begins with the substrate. The material a note is made from largely determines how durable, functional, and ultimately how tamper-resistant it can be. Modern banknotes are built on specially engineered cotton fibers, or hybrid constructions that combine cotton and polymer. These aren’t chosen for feel alone, though the characteristic texture of a cotton-based note is itself a first-line authentication tool, one most people use intuitively without realizing it. More importantly, many security features aren’t applied on top of the material; they’re embedded within it. That makes them structurally inseparable from the note, and a serious obstacle for anyone trying to replicate it.

2. Micromirror Technology: Light as a Verification Tool

Tilt a banknote and something shifts: colors change, and elements appear to float or move. These aren’t printing tricks, they’re the result of precisely engineered microstructures that control how light behaves at the surface. Among the most advanced developments in this field are micromirrors combined with nanostructures, at a scale almost impossible to visualize: up to one million of these micromirrors can fit on a single thumbnail. Aligned with nanometer precision, they reflect light to produce a clearly recognizable image, even in poor lighting. The effect is entirely physical, not digital, and it cannot be reproduced without highly specialized manufacturing equipment. No inkjet printer in the world comes close.

3. Sensor Technology: What Only Machines Can Detect

Most banknotes today are never verified by a human eye. They pass through ATMs, counting machines, and high-speed sorting systems that authenticate them in fractions of a second. This is made possible by features that are entirely invisible under normal conditions, such as elements that react to UV light, or carry characteristics readable only by dedicated sensors. This machine-readable layer largely operates in the background of everyday life. For the cash cycle, it’s essential. For counterfeiters, it’s one of the hardest barriers to crack, precisely because you can’t see what you’re trying to replicate.

4. Colour Technology: Pigments with Security Functions

The color design of banknotes serves purposes far beyond aesthetics. Special optically variable inks (OVIs) and iridescent features create effects that shift, disappear, or change color depending on the viewing angle, while others only become visible under specific light spectra or defined conditions. The color-shifting effect follows the same physics as the rainbow shimmer of oil on water, but applied with far greater precision. Layer thickness is calibrated at the nanometer level to determine exactly which frequencies of light are reflected. Even if a counterfeiter managed to reproduce the visual design, they would still be missing the underlying physical mechanism that makes it work.

5. Forensics: The Banknote’s Hidden Signature

The so-called Level 3 security layer is invisible, machine-readable, and embedded deep within the note. It can only be detected with specialized sensor technology, and it allows every individual banknote to be authenticated with high precision throughout the entire cash cycle. For counterfeiters, this layer is essentially inaccessible. Without the corresponding verification technology and system expertise, the hidden signatures can neither be identified nor replicated. It’s security through obscurity in the most literal sense: if you can’t find it, you can’t fake it. 

“Security features on banknotes must be extremely difficult to manufacture, while their effects must remain easy to recognize,” says Dr. Manfred Heim, Managing Director of G+D subsidiary Papierfabrik Louisenthal, responsible for Research & Development, Technology and Operations. “They are designed to withstand years of intensive use under highly diverse conditions, from physical wear to fully automated cash-handling processes. Modern security concepts don’t rely on any single feature. They work through multiple independent verification layers that combine physical robustness, machine authentication, and long-term stability.”

Lord Simon Wolfson, chief executive of the retail group Next, has blamed higher labour costs and slow growth in the UK economy for the shrinking of vacancies.

Next has stores in Oxford, with stores in the Westgate and Cowley Retail Park, as well as at the Orchard Centre in Didcot and Bicester’s Shopping Park.

Lord Wolfson told the BBC’s Big Boss Interview: “You can really see a dramatic fall in entry-level opportunities.

“In our stores just two years ago we had 10 applicants for every single job vacancy in our shops, that’s high.

“Today, that figure is at 19.

“I think that doubling of applicants for shop jobs is indicative of just how big the crisis is in youth unemployment at the moment.”

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Nearly one in six young people aged 16 to 24 were out of work in the first three months of 2026 – the highest level since 2015.

This comes as many retail shops are closing due to low profits.

Claire’s, Russel & Bromley, Dr. Martens, and Soletraders have all left Oxford in the pat year due to either the end of the company or to low sales in that particular store.

Lord Wolfson said the ‘tax on entry-level employment’ was partly behind the drop in opportunities, saying last year’s national insurance rate hike and increases to the national minimum wage had pushed up the cost of labour and “has to be reversed”.

But he said that “much more importantly” there needed to be more growth across the whole economy.

“If you’ve got fewer jobs, then the people who suffer the most are those with the least experience,” he said.

Chief executive, Lord Simon Wolfsom (Image: Next/PA Wire)

The retail boss, who is also a Conservative peer, also took aim at the Government’s Employment Rights Act which gives workers the right to guaranteed working hours over zero-hour or low-hour contracts.

New measures also coming into force next year will stop employers from rejecting flexible working requests without a valid reason.

He described the measures as “restrictions on flexible part-time working” and said “the result of that is we will offer fewer hours and (fewer) extra hours at Christmas”.

“That’s going to be bad news for our colleagues who want the extra hours, particularly students, and bad news for our customers because service won’t be as good,” he told the BBC.

The Oxford Youth Unemployment Hub runs from Monday to Friday at Rose Hill Community Centre.

The hub is run in partnership with the job centre, helping others with CVs, cover letters, and job searches.

The hub offers help and support for 16 to 25 year olds who are not in education, employment, or training.