Next will begin trialling self-service tills in the next couple of months to improve store efficiencies as it looks to mitigate the incoming £67m added to its wage bill following tax increases.

The high street giant’s chief executive Simon Wolfson told Retail Gazette that the business would introduce its first set of machines across selected stores in February, March and “if that’s successful, then we’ll roll it out as the year progresses”.

Wolfson said the retailer was looking at several “small improvements and operating efficiencies” to offset the tax increases coming into effect in April, including launching an automated returns process for online returns so customers would no longer need to take their orders to the till.

“For example, you could self scan and return and put it in a secure locker rather than take it to a till,” he said.

Wolfson said Next is “not expecting” to make any redundancies as it prepares to swallow the added £67m increase to its tax bill across the business.

“As we get natural turnover in our staff, where we introduce efficiencies, we will take on less new people rather than lose existing people,” he explained.

He stressed that “there’ll be certainly no impact on the number of stores this year since the changes in wage rates don’t take any shops from a profit to a loss”.

However, Wolfson said that the steep increase in costs is “likely to impede the growth marginally” and will “curtail the rate at which we take on new space”.

The business is also increasing the price of its clothing by 1%, which it hopes will help offset £13m.

Wolfson’s comments come as Next reported on Tuesday that it was raising its full-year profit outlook once again by £5m to £1.01bn following a better-than-expected 6% increase in fourth quarter full price sales.

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