Asda is to open its first high street supermarket without car parking as it seeks to ramp up expansion.

The grocer - which last week had its £778m acquisition of Netto cleared by the Office of Fair Trading - will open a 9,500 sq ft store on Tottenham High Road in north London. The store, a former Somerfield, will open on April 4.

The opening is significant because Asda has always shied away from shops without parking space and convenience stores, preferring larger out-of-town locations.

The Netto purchase gives Asda a swathe of smaller supermarkets, but they all have parking. An Asda spokesman said decisions about store acquisitions were driven by the market and location, and more stores without car parking would be considered in the right circumstances.

However, he said the Tottenham store was unique and did not represent a wholesale change in its site requirements for its supermarkets.

Asda is hungry for expansion, having lagged behind its competitors in the space race for the past few years. It does not have much experience of smaller supermarkets but the Netto acquisition will give it 147 stores, equating to 1.2 million sq ft of space.

It will also grow organically this year with seven Asda superstores, four Asda Livings, 10 new supermarkets - one of which is Tottenham - and five extensions.

Asda’s supermarket format ranges from 8,500 sq ft to 25,000 sq ft and stocks up to 10,000 products. It has also pledged to keep the same prices across all its formats.

The first converted Netto stores will be in Worksop, Wakefield and Stainforth and open in May.

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