The John Lewis Partnership is to pay its staff an extra £40 million after it realised that it had been miscalculating holiday and Sunday pay levels for the past seven years.

The mix-up will mean that approximately 69,000 partners are to receive an average of £350 in additional holiday pay.

Tracey Killen, director of personnel, said: "As soon as we established that we were not implementing the working time regulations correctly, we worked quickly to make the repayments to our partners in a way that is both fair and responsible."