The owner of John Lewis has warned of job cuts and scrapped its staff bonus after losses ballooned to more than £230m.

The John Lewis Partnership, which also owns Waitrose, said the past year had been "very tough" and warned cost-cutting efforts would be ramped up. 

Losses before tax hit £234m in its latest financial year from a £27m loss last year, as chairman Dame Sharon White said the cost- of living crisis had hit the partnership and its customers hard. Sales at its Waitrose supermarkets slumped 3pc despite price rises as shoppers switched to cheaper rivals such as Aldi and Lidl. 

Dame Sharon said the results indicated that the partnership needed to "step up our transformation". It comes a day after the company hired its first ever chief executive, Nish Kankiwala, a cost-cutting turnaround expert.

Costs are continuing to rise in the business, Dame Sharon said, even as headline inflation is starting to fall, meaning the business needed to become "more efficient and productive".

John Lewis said this would likely result in job cuts - something Dame Sharon said was a "massive regret to me personally". 

It also means staff will not be paid a bonus this year. The John Lewis Partnership operates under an employee-owned structure, with staff known as "partners". Dame Sharon told partners that the company could not "do as much as we would like on pay".

The partnership is under pressure to overhaul its business, as it said liquidity had dropped by £473m since the end of last year. It has £350m of debts that need repaying within the next two years.