Managers of a town centre supermarket have been forced to permanently close a door at the back of their store following “hundreds” of shoplifting incidents.

Bosses at Iceland in Ashford have posted a notice on their door by the taxi rank next to Wilko, telling shoppers to use the High Street entrance instead.

It follows numerous thefts from the shop, which is one of the last in the High Street to close its rear entrance linking it with Park Street.

The former Sussex Stationers bookshop, which became Tesco Express in 2012, previously had a rear entrance, as did Woolworths next door.

But a spokesman for the store said closing the door would help staff control security.

“With Christmas coming up, we are trying to take control of it a bit more as we have had hundreds of incidents,” she said.

“We have done it because we have a lot of thieves come in through the back door and we have explained why we have had to do it to our customers.

“The rear doors at shops along the whole of the High Street have been closed now.”

Speculation on social media suggested Iceland bosses had shut the entrance following the temporary closure of the nearby Taylors Passage, which will be closed for a maximum of six months.

Contractors working on the former Burton store next to WHSmith erected scaffolding in the cut-through, forcing Kent County Council to shut the route last month.

But the store’s spokesman said: “It is nothing to do with Taylors Passage.

“We have trialled shutting the door before and we got a bad response when we did but having talked to our customers about why we are doing it permanently now, because of security, we haven’t had a negative response.”