THE strength of ‘people power’ has proved effective after supermarket giant, Morrisons, which caused uproar among many of its Skipton customers by reducing the number of its manned tills, performed a U-turn this week and says it is putting some of them back in.

Two weeks ago the Herald published a letter from angry customer Josh Horne who said reducing check-outs operated by staff member to just eight, and replacing them so there are now eight self check-outs, was ‘treating customers with disdain’.

The letter, as well as several posts on social media, created a storm of protests with customers saying they were going to either vote with their feet and go elsewhere, continue to use the manned tills creating long queues, or operate a ‘go-slow’ at the self-checkouts. Others said they feared fewer manned tills would lead to staff redundancies.

Some customers said they wanted choice and did not want to use the new technology and serve themselves, while others said a large shop was almost impossible to scan efficiently. Another said she had tried to use the self-service from her wheelchair and couldn’t so had left her shopping and gone to another supermarket in town. Another on social media said they were outraged after staff asked to look at their receipt after they checked out their own shopping. He said the company should trust customers if they expected them to do their job for them.

Now the bosses at the Bradford-founded store in Broughton Road, who oversaw the Skipton refit, say they have listened to customers and are putting a number of manned tills back in to show they care about people’s opinions and custom.

Skipton store manager James Lever said: “Our customers in Skipton told us that they were not happy with the changes we had made to our tills and that they wanted us to put some of the manned checkouts back in. We have listened to this feedback and will be putting four back in early December, so we will have 12 in total.”

The company hopes to re-install the machines by the end of the week or early next week.