Morrisons fined £737,000 – What do Supermarket Food Safety Claims Turn On?
By David Healey, Senior Solicitor · May 2026
Yes — supermarkets owe a clear duty of care to keep their food and their premises safe. That duty applies whether you bought a contaminated product, fell ill after eating in-store, or were injured on the premises.
This week, Morrisons was fined £737,000 at Newport Magistrates’ Court for 51 gaps in its food safety management system. Management had been aware of the failings for more than a month before inspectors walked in.
The judge called the failings “serious and systemic” — words that change what evidence looks like in any similar claim. A documented breakdown in a chain’s own safety system is some of the strongest evidence a claimant can have.
If you were harmed by unsafe food or unsafe conditions at a supermarket in England or Wales, the legal route is well-trodden. You have three years to claim, and Carter & Carter Solicitors handles every claim personally at senior solicitor level.
A national supermarket chain. A bakery inside a Welsh store. A routine inspection by Environmental Health Officers in August 2024. And, written into the inspectors’ report, fifty-one separate gaps in the store’s food safety management system — gaps management had known about for more than a month and had not closed.
That is the case heard at Newport Magistrates’ Court on 8 May 2026. The defendant pleaded guilty to four food hygiene offences. The fine was £737,000, reduced from a starting figure of £1.1 million only because of the early guilty plea. The bakery had been closed on the day of the inspection for a deep clean.
For anyone in England or Wales who has ever wondered whether a national supermarket can really be held to account for unsafe food or unsafe premises, this case is worth understanding in detail.
I bought something from a supermarket and got ill — can I really claim?
Yes. The legal framework is older and steadier than most people realise.
If you became unwell after eating food bought from or eaten in a supermarket, three legal routes open up at once. The Food Safety Act 1990 places a duty on every food business to ensure the food it sells is safe to eat. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives you a right of redress where a product is not of satisfactory quality. And the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957 places a duty on every business that controls premises to take reasonable care to keep visitors safe.
Most supermarket-injury cases ride on a combination of these. The Food Safety Act prosecution that hits the supermarket as a criminal matter is brought by the local council. The civil claim — the one that can recover compensation for the person who was actually harmed — is a separate route, run through the County Court, on the same underlying facts.
What does “51 gaps in food safety management” actually mean?
A food safety management system is the documented set of procedures a food business uses to control risks: temperatures, allergen controls, cleaning schedules, supervision routines, training records, hazard analysis. The system is mandatory under the Food Safety Act 1990 and the General Food Law (Regulation (EC) 178/2002, retained in UK law). For a supermarket bakery, the system covers everything from the temperature of the proving cabinet to the supervision of staff handling open-product surfaces.
When Environmental Health Officers visit, they are not testing the food on the shelves. They are testing the system. A finding of fifty-one separate gaps means fifty-one specific points where the documented procedure had not been followed — and where, on the day of the inspection, no one had closed the loop.
The figure that does the heaviest legal work, though, is not 51. It is the fact that management had been aware of the gaps for more than a month before the inspectors walked in. A safety failing that surprises a business is one kind of evidence. A safety failing the business knew about and chose not to fix is a different kind altogether.
Won’t the supermarket just say it was an isolated mistake?
That is the defence most claimants worry about, and it is the defence almost every chain reaches for first. A single rogue staff member. A one-off lapse. A momentary failure in an otherwise robust system.
In the Morrisons case, the judge dealt with that defence directly. The failings were, in her words, “serious and systemic failures throughout all levels of the organisation.” This was not a hidden problem — it was a problem visible to anyone working in or near the bakery. Training had been delivered. Supervision had not.
Once a court has used the word “systemic” on the record, the “one-off” defence loses most of its weight in any similar civil claim against the same chain. The judgment becomes a piece of public evidence — admissible, citable, and difficult for a defendant to argue around. This is the legal consequence of the case that matters most for an individual claimant, and it is the consequence the headline fine alone does not capture.
Supermarket CCTV is wiped on a rolling cycle, usually somewhere between 21 and 31 days. If something happens to you in a store — illness from a product, a fall, contact with a contaminated item — the clock on the footage starts the moment the incident ends.
The single most useful thing to do in the 24 hours afterwards is to write — not phone, not speak to the duty manager — to the chain’s head office customer service team in writing. Ask them, in those words, to preserve any CCTV covering the relevant aisle, till, or section. By the time a claim is investigated weeks later, whether that single email exists is often the difference between footage being available and the recording being gone.
What evidence would I actually need if I claimed?
The strongest supermarket claims are built from five categories of evidence. None of them are exotic. Most can be assembled in the days after the incident.
A till receipt, a bank or card statement showing the transaction, a delivery confirmation email, or — for in-store incidents — a witness who saw you in the relevant part of the shop.
A 111 call log, an A&E attendance, a GP note, or a stool sample submitted by your GP if food poisoning is suspected. The medical record is the bridge between what happened and what it cost you.
The accident book entry (if you fell or were injured on the premises), the customer-service correspondence (if you complained about a product), and — critically — the request to preserve CCTV.
A council Environmental Health Officer may already have visited the store. Inspection reports, food hygiene ratings, and any enforcement notices are publicly available or can be requested. A poor inspection record close in time to your incident is significant evidence.
The product label, the packaging, the spillage on the floor, the unsigned wet-floor area, the unsafe display. A photograph at the moment of the incident is worth more in a civil claim than any letter written six months later.
“When a judge has called the failings systemic and the documents show management knew, the ‘one-off’ defence has nowhere left to go. That is what makes a case like this useful well beyond the headline — anyone bringing a similar claim against the same chain has a piece of public-record evidence to point to.”
— David Healey, Senior Solicitor
If I have a serious food allergy, does this case mean anything for me?
The Morrisons prosecution was not about allergens. The four charges were for general food hygiene — cleanliness, equipment, supervision, food safety management. There was no specific allergen failure on the indictment.
But food safety management and allergen management live in the same documented system. The Food Information Regulations 2014 sit alongside the Food Safety Act 1990, and they are administered by the same staff, supervised by the same managers, and audited by the same Environmental Health Officers. A chain whose food safety management has fifty-one known gaps is a chain whose allergen control sits on the same foundations.
If you suffered an allergic reaction because of an undeclared allergen at a supermarket, the case you would build runs through different statutory routes — but it draws on the same kind of management-system evidence. Can I sue for an allergic reaction? is the starting point.
10%
when your claim settles without court proceedings — which is the route the vast majority of personal injury claims take.
25%
only if court proceedings become necessary. We tell you in writing the moment that threshold is approached.
Which kind of public place injury are you dealing with?
If the Morrisons case is close to your situation, the page on the right will be the most directly useful. Other public-place injuries have their own legal contours.
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Carter & Carter Solicitors is a specialist personal injury practice handling accidents in public places, accidents at work, allergic reactions, and needlestick injuries across England and Wales. Every claim is handled personally by Chris Carter or David Healey from start to finish.
David Healey is a Senior Solicitor at Carter & Carter Solicitors in Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire. Qualified in 2005, David has spent over 21 years helping people injured in public places and at work. Accident in public places claims are one of the firm’s four specialist practice areas. Carter & Carter is one of very few firms in England and Wales to publish its fee structure upfront and to handle every claim personally at senior solicitor level from start to finish. About Carter & Carter Solicitors.