Waitrose is planning a major store refurbishment programme this year on up to 25 shops - about 10% of its core estate.

It represents a doubling of the number of stores Waitrose refurbished in a typical year.

Waitrose MD Mark Price said the supermarket had acquired a number of stores from Somerfield and Safeway a decade ago that were now due for refurbishment.

“We have a policy of refurbishing stores every 10 years so we’ll have to up the ante this year,” he said. Waitrose also had plans to add new features across the store estate later in the year.

Waitrose reported a 3.4% increase in like-for-like sales, to £5.8bn for the year ending 26 January on Thursday. With 2.2% sales growth for the first half of 2012, the second half saw a sizeable acceleration.

Margins increased to 5% as operating profits rose 12.2% to £292.3m, helping The John Lewis Partnership achieve a 15% increase in operating profits to £452.4m, with sales up 9.3% to £9.5bn. Pre-tax profits were up 15.8% to £409.6m as the partnership handed staff a 17% bonus this year, above analyst predictions of 15%.

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