Supermarket giant Tesco has confirmed it is to slash thousands of jobs as part of a major shake-up of in-store departments.

Following speculation at the weekend, it says 9,000 roles will be hit as it introduces changes to some of the delicatessen, meat and fish counters in its biggest stores.

As a consequence, it has now confirmed 90 stores across the UK will close their counters with the remaining 700 “trading with either a full or flexible” offer for customers.

However, it says changes to bakeries will not take place "this year".

When asked by the KM if any of its Kent stores would be impacted it said no details of stores have yet been revealed but will be "in due course" once staff have been spoken to.

Amid a host of other changes, it will simplify stock control, merchandising, and roll-out self-service kitchen areas for staff where hot food is served, having an impact on third-party caterers, as part of a host of cost-cutting measures.

There will also be a streamlining of its head office staff with resulting job losses.

A spokesman said: "Overall, we estimate up to 9,000 Tesco colleague roles could be impacted, however, our expectation is that up to half of these colleagues could be redeployed to other customer-facing roles.

"We are working with our third party providers to understand the impact on their staff in our colleague hot food service.

"Media speculation over the weekend was premature and we have accelerated our communications to colleagues in order to reduce the significant uncertainty created by incorrect information.

"We will be doing all we can to help colleagues affected by these changes, including offering redeployment opportunities wherever possible."

Jason Tarry, CEO, of Tesco in the UK, added: “In our four years of turnaround we’ve made good progress, but the market is challenging and we need to continually adapt to remain competitive and respond to how customers want to shop.

"We’re making changes to our UK stores and head office to simplify what we do and how we do it, so we’re better able to meet the needs of our customers. This will impact some of our colleagues and our commitment is to minimise this as much as possible and support our colleagues throughout.”