Angry residents have hit out at a supermarket giant after claiming to find half-empty shelves and “overworked” staff at its Chesham store.

Writing on Sainsbury’s Facebook page, Vanessa Franklin said: “In the 45 years that I have been shopping at your Chesham store, I have never seen the store in such a sorry state.

“The store has huge holes in its stock and what staff there were, were under great pressure.

“The queues at which tills were open had a minimum of 4/5 customers waiting and the self-checkout had in excess of 15 waiting.

“As usual, no sign of any managers and no checkout manager. The till operators looked as though they were at breaking point.

“What is going on? Are you intentionally running it down to vacate the store because believe me, if this carries on you will succeed very quickly.”

And resident Peter Brown branded the store a “disaster”, saying the staff were “gloomy and overworked”.

But Sainsbury’s has insisted there are no issues at the store.