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Showing posts from November, 2017

Octobers National Council.

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This blog was written not long after the Octobers meeting, and then I forgot to post it.   So apologies for the late report.  There were several very interesting speakers at Council.   Alan Leighton and Ian Ellis the Chair and Finance Director gave an update on the first half year trading performance.   The results can be found here .   Alan said that he was comfortable that we were on plan and Ian sounded confident. So far so good.   But as one of my colleagues on the Council pointed out an underlying profit of £14m on revenues of £3,4bn leaves room for improvemnt.    Alan mentioned two things I thought were significant. He praised our apprentice scheme that was on track to take 1000 young people, pay them a wage and train them.   So far, we have a retention rate of 80%.   We were informed 20% is more the norm. He also saw a greater role for our school Academy programme, linking in with our apprentice scheme and then taking them onto full-time employment.   The Co-op ma