Co-operative Group National Members Council South West

Sunny Angel Square Welcome to the report of the Co-ops National Council meeting held on a sunny Saturday in late September   As usual, when the sun was shining and everyone was having a great time enjoying the late September summer, I along with my one hundred fellow council members and colleagues from the Co-op were encased in the basement Auditorium of 1 Angel Square.   . Although the Council started work at 9.30 in the morning, there was an informal session with Steve Murrells the  CEO Co-op food, on  the day before. This session updated the Council the  progress of our food business and how our renewal programme “True North” was performing.Members may remember a few months ago that the Group sold many of our food stores to McColl’s as part of this strategy.   Council members had raised some concerns over this sale and  Steve and his colleague from estates came to update us and respond to our concerns. Steve explained that the sale of the stores to McColl’s were sto

The National Members Council met up in July. Apologies for the late posting of this episode of the blog, The summer  distracted me.  The first piece of business was to elect a new Vice President of the Council. Mark Bicknell was elected for a one-year term last May and consequently his term of office had expired. There was an outstanding field of candidates for this position and I am pleased to report that in a very close vote Bev Perkins was elected to the position.   Congratulations Bev We also voted for five members of the Council to join the Senate. The Senate acts as the main committee for the Council, and meets monthly to ensure that the members interests are represented between the quarterly National Council meetings. Pippa Wicks The first main speakers to present to the Council were Pippa Wicks and Rachel Woodman.   Pippa is the Chief Operating Officer and Rachel our Director of Transformation.   They came to update us on the progress of the Vital 5 and

It doesn’t seem a year ago, that I was at my first annual general meeting under our new rules and wrote my first blob.  But nine blogs later, I'm blogging about my second members AGM.   In the past the AGM was a delegates only event, with only elected members attending and casting their vote. As the Chair of the SW Region I often voted on behalf of over one million members. I not sure how I managed represent all their views but that was the system then. Following changes in our rules, the AGM is now open to all members.    This year I guess we had over 800 members in the hall.   Not all could vote, as the Council has decided that members need to trade with the Co-op to be eligible to vote. This year the Council set the barrier at £250 in one calendar year.   I arrived early to the meeting so I could attend a briefing session from Ian Ellis our Finance Director. He was briefing Council members on the annual accounts and answering any questions that we had. Ian h