Proudfoot’s three Scarborough supermarkets close after Tesco sale

Three Proudfoot supermarkets in Scarborough closed on Sunday after being sold to Tesco, the BBC reported. The shops at Newby, Manham Hill and Seamer traded for the last time, leaving the family-run grocer with only its Eastfield store. It is one confirmed local example, not a measure of closures across UK retail.

On the BBC’s account this was a sale to another grocer rather than a collapse, and it involves a single company. The official sales figures further down are the latest we hold and cover 2025. They do not count closures, so we have not put a total on closures across the sector.

What happens to the Proudfoot shops

According to the BBC, Proudfoot was founded in 1948 by Wilf Proudfoot, a returning serviceman, who started with his demobilisation grant. The first shop opened on Main Street in Seamer, and the Newby store opened in 1965. The company has traded for 78 years, and the BBC described it as a name known in the town for generations.

Valerie Aston, a director at Proudfoot, said: “We are pleased to pass on our established award-winning stores on to Tesco. We have carefully considered this decision and we believe these stores will continue to flourish, offering market-leading services to the local communities they serve.” The BBC did not report a financial reason for the sale beyond that.

The timeline is short. The Seamer and Manham Hill stores will reopen as Tesco Express shops later this year, and the Newby store will reopen as a Tesco Superstore early in the new year. The Proudfoot shop on Eastfield’s High Street will continue to trade as normal.

What customers told the BBC

Shoppers leaving the Newby store told the BBC they would miss it. Jodie Wilson, who has used it for about 20 years, said it would be “strange” to see it go, and she said it “was a family-run place, so it had that family appeal”. She expected Tesco to drop the seasonal gifts and ornaments sold on the upper floor.

Another customer, Peter, said he shops there almost every day because a health condition means he cannot walk far. He expects to need a taxi or bus until the new Tesco opens. He also said he looked forward to the change, because his daughter is gluten-free and Tesco stocks more for her than Proudfoot’s small aisle did.

Those two views show the practical effect of a closure like this. There is a gap of some months for the Newby site, when people who depended on a nearby shop must travel further. After that, the choice of products may widen even as the independent character is lost.

What the sales trend shows

The ONS figures describe a market that is growing slowly rather than collapsing. The ONS said retail sales volumes in Great Britain rose by 1.3% over 2025, following a rise of 0.2% in 2024. It said volumes “did not recover from the 2023 fall, and remained below 2019 pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic levels”.

Volumes rose 0.4% in December 2025, after falls of 0.1% in November and 0.8% in October (revised up from a 0.9% fall). Over the three months to December, volumes were 0.3% lower than in the previous quarter, though 2.1% higher than in the same quarter of 2024.

The ONS also said volumes in December 2025 were 1.5% below their level in February 2020, just before the pandemic. In plain terms, shops were selling a little more than a year earlier but still slightly less than before Covid. The ONS bulletin does not count store openings or closures, so these figures cannot show whether chains are cutting branches.

What is behind the figures

The ONS pointed to a shift towards online buying. Online spending values rose 2.1% in the fourth quarter compared with the third, and 8.4% compared with the fourth quarter of 2024. In December alone, online values were up 1.8% on the month and 11.1% on December 2024.

The proportion of sales made online rose from 28.0% in November 2025 to 28.3% in December 2025. As a simple illustration, in every £100 spent in December, about £28.30 went through online channels, compared with £28.00 a month earlier. That is a small monthly move, but it points the same way as the annual growth in online spending.

Store-based categories were weaker at the end of the year. The ONS said non-food stores, which cover department, clothing, household and other non-food shops, fell 0.9% on the month in December. It also noted that monthly figures can be volatile and should be read alongside the three-month rate. The bulletin says nothing about rents, wages, business rates or other costs, so we cannot say what drives any single company’s decision.

What it means for readers

For shoppers, the effect of a closure is local. If a branch you use is named in an announcement, check the company’s own statement for the closing date, and ask about gift cards, loyalty points and orders in progress. In the Proudfoot case, the BBC reported dates for the reopening only as “later this year” and “early in the new year”, so check with Tesco for exact opening days.

Opening hours are another point to check when a shop changes hands. According to GOV.UK, small shops in England and Wales, up to and including 280 square metres, can open any day or hour. Larger shops can open on Sundays for only six consecutive hours between 10am and 6pm, and must close on Easter Sunday and Christmas Day. A large store could therefore open from 10am to 4pm or from noon to 6pm, but not from 10am to 6pm. There are no trading hours restrictions in Scotland.

Workers have limited rights over bank holidays. GOV.UK says there is no automatic right to have public holidays off unless it is in the contract, and extra pay for working them is optional unless the contract says otherwise. Reported.News will update this piece as other companies confirm branch counts.

Your questions answered

What stores are shutting down in 2026?

The one closure we can confirm from our sources is Proudfoot’s three Scarborough supermarkets, at Newby, Manham Hill and Seamer, which closed on Sunday after being sold to Tesco. We have not confirmed other chains’ closure plans or the number of sites affected nationally. The most reliable source is each company’s own announcement or its filings.

What are some closed down shops in the UK?

The ONS does not publish a list of individual shops that have closed. It measures how much is bought across the sector. Local councils and the companies concerned are the best places to confirm whether a particular branch is closing, and the Proudfoot stores are a recent example reported by the BBC.