John Lewis is considering plans to build 10,000 homes over the next decade as the high street store group looks to revive its flagging fortunes by becoming a landlord.

The employee-owned group, which comprises the upmarket John Lewis department stores and the Waitrose supermarkets, is understood to have identified enough excess space on the land it owns to build at least 7,000 homes.

The properties, which will range from studio flats to four-bedroom houses, will be built on sites owned by the chain, above Waitrose supermarkets or on land next to the company’s distribution centres.

Tenants of a John Lewis-owned home will have the option of renting the property fully furnished with the department store’s products or using their own. Some of its housing developments are expected to come with a concierge service, and many are expected to include a Waitrose convenience store as part of the development.

Sheep farmers in the UK plan to stop selling lamb for a week in August as part of a protest against low prices paid to producers.

The social media campaign, called #NoLambWeek, has been launched to create awareness among the public about the crash of farmers’ return on lamb.

Lamb prices are 30% down on last year and this month reached their lowest price for six years.

But while farmers’ share of the retail price has dropped from 60% last June to 50% this year, on the supermarket shelves the price has only dropped by 6%.

It is understood the idea for #NoLambWeek, which will run from 1-7 August, was started by a group of farmers who met at the Royal Welsh Show last week.

This story tells us:

Selling bread and beans was all very well, but the real growth was to be found in tempting shoppers with other products.

Swimsuits, barbecue kit, microwaves, Halloween costumes – the merchandise became more and more exotic.

Going to the supermarket became an endurance event as trolleys became bigger, to hold flat screen televisions and computer printers.

It was not uncommon to see shoppers trying to wrestle two trolleys through the checkout.

It all seems slightly comical now, unless of course you are a supermarket boss.

Aldi has overtaken Waitrose to become Britain’s sixth largest supermarket after a surge in sales for the German discounter.

Aldi’s leapfrogging of upmarket Waitrose highlights the dramatic changes in the grocery industry, with the market share controlled by the “big four” – Tesco, Asda, J Sainsbury and Wm Morrison – now at the lowest level for a decade.

The German discounter has ambitious expansion plans, meaning its growth is likely to continue. Industry figures shows that Aldi will open more than five times the amount of new shop space compared to Tesco this year, and more than Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons combined.

The discounter said on Wednesday that it will target expansion in London during 2015 and quadruple in size in the city by opening nine new stores. Growth in London is a key part of Aldi’s ambition to double in size to 1,000 stores by 2022.

Although Waitrose has been overtaken by Aldi, the upmarket grocer is one of only three supermarkets to grow its market share alongside Aldi and Lidl. In contrast, Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons are all in decline and the 72.8pc market share controlled by the “big four” is the lowest level for a decade.

The former head of the Food Standards Agency (FSA), who went straight from his job as regulator to a lucrative role as technical director of Tesco, lobbied the government this summer about its plans to publish the official food poisoning contamination rates for supermarket chicken, the Guardian has been told.

Tim Smith is understood to have warned the Department of Health in June that FSA proposals for publishing results, which included naming and shaming individual supermarkets, could provoke a food scare and damage the industry.

The lobbying has raised questions over whether Smith has abided by terms set by David Cameron for his appointment. His move straight from the regulator to a supermarket group he had been regulating in October 2012 was approved by the prime minister, following advice from the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, on the condition that he did not lobby civil servants or ministers on behalf of Tesco for two years.

The FSA has been fighting a decade-long campaign to get supermarkets and the poultry industry to clean up their meat

An avenue of 100 English oak trees planted in Cornwall to mark the start of the millennium with the expectation they would last 1,000 years, is under threat from a supermarket and hotel development.

The plans, under examination by Cornwall council, mean that Millennium Avenue, that was intended to be still standing in the year 3000, could be threatened by the building of a new supermarket, pub, hotel and scores of homes just 13 years after it was planted.

Developer Wessex Investors, which intends to build the Morrisons supermarket, a Premier Inn hotel and up to 275 homes in the Pennygillam area of Launceston later this year, says there is no other safe and viable access to the site, which it claims was allocated for commercial use. Its managing director told The Independent that the development would create 400 jobs for the local area and that the company intends to remove no more than five trees during its refurbishment. “This has been on the drawing board for nearly two years and we are trying to accommodate everyone the best we can,” Andrew Pegg said. “While five will be removed under current plans, we intend to plant 93 trees in the new development.”

 
Ministers are to give a new Groceries Code Adjudicator the power to fine supermarkets if they abuse their suppliers by forcing down wholesale prices to below-cost levels. It comes after supermarkets have been accused of behaving unreasonably when setting prices – and changing the terms of agreements once they have been struck.

 
An independent adjudicator will now rule on complaints and penalise supermarkets found to have broken the new guidelines. They will also be named and shamed. The level of fines has yet to be set and will be determined by Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, in the coming weeks. However, they are likely to be based on other authorities, such as the Office of Fair Trading, who can levy multi-million pound fines for the worst abuses.