Co-operative Group National Members Council South West

The Co-ops AGm was held on the 19th May 19, as usual in Manchester.   The Co-op has an excellent AGM website at this link .  Ian Ellis our Chief Finance Officer reported on a solid set of results.  If you look at the results the underlying profit for the society was £43m. Now, this looks very low for a business of our size.  However, this was after we deducted £60m paid to members in the form of the 5 and 1 members reward. If this had been paid out of the bottom line, then our underlying profits would have been £103m, which starts to look OK. At the AGM, the results of the National Council elections were announced.  Congratulations to Heather Barker who was elected for the first time in the South West.  Again, all the results can be found on the AGM link.  Our Board of Directors is voted on by the members. Some are elected on a straight yes/no ballot and some, the Member Nominated Directors face contested an election.   For the MND electio...

Last year at the Glastonbury music festival the Co-op opened a convenience shop built in the campsite area of the Somerset-based festival.   This year the Co-op announced an exclusive partnership with Glastonbury to open a shop at the 2019 festival. Glastonbury’s famously high environmental and community responsibility standards led to Co-op being carefully selected as the festival’s retail partner. The agreement between the two is founded on our shared ethos of co-op eration, community support, ethical values and campaigning to make meaningful change. This partnership builds on the success the retailer had at music festivals last year, and will see a Co-op , which regularly welcomes 175,000 people. Selling a wide range of food, drink and festival essentials like sandwiches, water, bacon, eggs and bread alongside the obligatory sun cream and rain ponchos, the store will relieve festival goers of having to stock up on New delivery thoughts. The Co-op aims to re...

Hello. Thanks for visiting my blog.   This is my way of keeping members in the South West informed of the proceedings of the Co-op National Council. The Council met in Manchester on   Saturday 26 th January. On the Friday evening before Council, I attended a talk by Brad Hill on the success of Fairtrade.   Brad was the Co-ops manager in charge of Fairtrade for over 20 years, until his retirement last year.    He described the highs and lows of the Co-ops involvement with Fairtrade. I am glad to say that it was mainly highs and the Co-op is still the leading retailer for Fairtrade products in the country. Brad not only highlighted the achievements of the Co-op but also framed it in personal terms.   He talked of the lives transformed in developing countries and how buying Fairtrade products lifted people out of poverty.   It was an inspiring talk and it reaffirmed the need for the Co-op to constantly promote new Fairtrade products and to find...