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Edinburgh Live

National

Emma Gill & Sara Odeen-Isbister

Busy UK supermarket which was one of cheapest last year is now the most expensive

Asda Which Tesco Morrisons Sainsbury Aldi Lidl Edinburgh

A popular supermarket chain ranked as one of the cheapest at the start of the cost of living crisis is now the most expensive, research has revealed.

Edinburgh Live's sister title MEN started tracking the cost of the same eight essentials at the six main supermarkets a year ago as families were hit with rising costs. They looked at budget store prices, as well as Morrisons, Asda, Sainsbury's and Tesco to see how they fared.

When eight essential products from Lidl, Aldi, Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury's and Tesco were compared 12 months ago, Asda came out as third cheapest after budget retailers Lidl and Aldi. But now the same comparison of goods has revealed Asda as the most expensive.

Last year, it was Aldi which came out as cheapest overall, with a bill of £9.13 for the shopping basket, which included a two-pint bottle of milk, a loaf of bread, a pack of chicken breasts, a pack of mince, tea bags, coffee, beans and butter.

Lidl was just a penny more at £9.14, and Asda came in third at £9.44. Meanwhile Tesco's basket came to £9.52, Morrisons £9.69 and Sainsbury's £10.45.

Over the last year we've seen prices soar at all the stores, so much so that the shopping basket of goods now costs £12 or more at every store except for Lidl - and that's not too far behind at £11.88.

The bill for all but one of them has risen by 25 percent since our first comparison, but the most drastic rise of all has been at Asda, where the cost has gone up 32.4 percent to £12.50 - currently the highest of all the stores.

Aldi is the next biggest increase, 31.4 percent, followed by Lidl and Tesco's 30% and Morrisons' 25 percent. It's actually Sainsbury's which has seen the lowest rise of 17.8 percent, but it did start out in the unenviable position of the most expensive of the lot.

This week it's improved its position to fourth cheapest following a price rise at Tesco, which has increased the cost of its cheapest Stockwell coffee to 99p for a 100g tub.

Morrisons, which briefly fared better than Aldi last week, largely due to a price drop on its chicken breasts, is now back in third position following two price hikes, on both bread and teabags.

But it's a much better position than it was, as it spent more than six months of the last year as the most expensive of all - and faced the wrath of shoppers who accused it of 'laughing at customers' with ridiculous price hikes.

The figures showing Asda's annual hike come just weeks after we reported how it had come under fire for increasing the prices of some of its cheapest items in its Just Essentials range.

Shoppers say they have cut back as much as they can and claim it's unfair to increase prices in the budget range.

An Asda spokesperson: "We launched the Just Essentials By Asda range last year to provide customers with the option of getting all of their weekly essentials from the same low-cost brand range in all of our stores nationwide.

"We’re working hard to keep prices in check for customers despite global inflationary pressures and we remain the lowest-priced major supermarket – a position recognised by Which? in their regular monthly basket comparison which has named Asda as the cheapest supermarket for a big shop every month for the last three years.

"Last month we announced we would be freezing the prices of over 500 popular branded and own label products, more than half of which are fresh meat, dairy, fruit and vegetable products until the end of May."

Here's the full list