We confirm that we routinely review how best to approach the disclosure of information relating to remuneration and we will take your suggestions into account when we come to consider the Remuneration and Appointments Committee’s Report next year.

Helen Jackson, Director, Vice Chair of the Board and Board Ambassador for Climate Action

Thank you for your query on our climate commitments and plastic wrap.

We currently have near-term climate targets validated by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). These are a 50% reduction in direct emissions by 2030, and 17% reduction in indirect emissions by 2030. Direct emissions are those directly associated with our business, including fuel used, refrigerant gas, and electricity. Indirect emissions include those emissions associated with our supply chain and manufacture or development of our products and services (everything before point of sale), and those associated with our customers and their use of our products. Our progress on our climate targets is monitored and managed by our Climate Action Group.

In order to tackle our emissions, we are continuing to invest in our estate to minimize our impact, as well as reduce resource use. Recent investments include installing photovoltaic panels (solar panels) on various sites, replacing refrigerant gas, installing Ecoblades into fridge shelving to keep cool air in and hot air out, and installing thermal night-blinds on refrigeration.

Our plastic wrap is returned to Co-op Group depots via their delivery trucks, where it is sent for soft plastics recycling. The soft plastics is turned into post-consumer plastic granules, which are then made into secondary products. Thank you for the suggestion of using recycled cardboard. We will take this onboard for future consideration.

Thanks again for reaching out to us.

Helen

Alison Hesselberth, Board Director

Thank you for your communication.

Also thank you for your question, your question was multi layered so please allow us to answer it in full point by point.

When we decided to implement SCOs across our food estate we did so for two key reasons, first and foremost customers fully expect to be able to shop with us in a number of ways. SCOs were widely used across the whole industry and therefore our customers rightly expected to be able to use that technology in our stores, giving a seamless and quicker convenience shopping experience for those that wanted it. Secondly, we did review the working hours in stores as part of this rollout but removed less hours than the amount of task that was removed, our approach was to give our store teams more time to deal with customer queries and service. We rolled out new ways of working as part of this implementation, coaching the colleague who operates behind the kiosk to be out front when they have no customers to serve, offering help and guidance to customers using the SCO, this has generally worked well and maybe something worthy of a revisit for us.

We understand that there are and always will unfortunately be instances where customers steal from us, in the main this doesn’t happen through our SCO units although there will sometimes be opportunist theft, this is why we have our current processes and procedures in place.

With regards to the time delay at the end of the transaction, this is something that we had reviewed previously, we will look again to see if there are any further improvements we can make.

There are two final points I wanted to make, firstly you talk of apprehending thieves, this is not something we want you to do. We really want you as a colleague to follow your Protecting Our People training (an internal training programme designed to protect our colleague in store), avoiding direct action or conflict and therefore not putting yourself at risk. We have many channels and platforms to report and flag incidents back to Head office, I encourage you and the store team to use the right channels, these influences where we spend our security budget and the priority and most at need stores.

As far as we are aware of, there is one supermarket chain who has removed SCO from a few of their stores, that is Booth’s in the North of England, a small family run business, none of the bigger chains have or are currently planning removal of these.

Once again, many thanks for taking the time to write to us.

Kind Regards

Alison

Helen Jackson, Director, Vice Chair of the Board and Board Ambassador for Climate Action

Thank you for your communication.

Southern Co-op does not have a specific political agenda and is in fact politically neutral as set out in our constitution. Southern Co-op is a regional, independent co-operative with a commitment to sustainable business and a promise to provide a fair, fresh approach, for all. This is achieved through investment in our communities, action we take to protect the environment and our support for local food producers.

We’re a responsible, local business, but it’s important that we play our part in supporting the global sustainability agenda. We have aligned our strategic direction and objectives to support the delivery of those United Nations Sustainable Development Goals that we believe we can make a positive contribution towards. We have an active programme to address climate action and protect the natural environment as we believe it is important for us to play our part in addressing climate risk.

In addition, as a responsible business, the safety of our colleagues and customers is of high importance to us. Unfortunately, we are seeing societal issues that are leading to increased violence and aggression towards some of our colleagues. We are committed to tackling such issues and a number of approaches and initiatives are in place; from the technology we have invested in such as CCTV, headsets so colleagues can communicate instantly with others elsewhere in the store if they need assistance and, in high-risk stores, retention of screens implemented during the pandemic, security staff, facial recognition and new trials of exit turnstiles. The partnerships we actively participate in, both in terms of information/know how sharing and also financial support, are also an important and valuable part of our response to the problem as a whole and seek to help tackle core societal issues through community organisations expert in their field. We may also lobby relevant third parties to raise awareness of the issues and seek wider action to reduce the risk to our colleagues and customers. Prevention is always our goal but we live in the real world so we have support programmes and access to counselling for colleagues affected by the incidents in stores. As you will see a holistic approach is taken to this issue which includes some of the matters you have referred to.

I hope this explains why some of the measures you refer to are in place. I am glad that you are enjoying working for Southern Co-op and in your store. Thank you again for your views and questions.

Helen Jackson, Director, Vice Chair of the Board and Board Ambassador for Climate Action

Thank you for your question and for getting in touch.

Soft plastics, such as cling film, biscuit and crisp wrappers, can now be recycled in 167 of our stores including Western Road, Hove; Portland Road, Hove and Old Shoreham Road, Hove. There are a small number of stores without soft plastics recycling bins as, due to a lack of space in those stores, it would be impractical to fit them in. The soft plastics recycling bins are located within the store and we hope they enable our members and customers to safely recycle materials that cannot be recycled at home. Once collected, the recyclable material is turned into post-consumer plastic granules. These are then made into secondary products such as bin liners, buckets and construction industry materials. Our store finder shows all the services including plastic recycling for each store. (https://southern.coop/store-locator)

Other items that can be recycled include: bread bags, produce bags, ordinary carrier bags, wrappers around kitchen towel and toilet roll, bags that nappies come in, bags from cotton wool, cereal box liners, bags from frozen foods, bags from ice cubes, lids on yogurts, cream and desserts, lids from packs of meat and ready meals, lidding film from cheese packs, wrapping around chicken, fruit and veg flow wrap, chocolate wrappers, wrappers from croissants, pancakes and crumpets, biscuit wrappers, wrappers from cakes and Yorkshire puddings, flower wrappers, bags from dried fruit, sugar, pulses, rice and pasta, protective wrappers from gift wrap, bags from gift tags, pastry packaging, bags from household textiles and similar such as all-purpose cloths, dusters, dishcloths, rubber gloves and scourers, wrappers from pet food, wrappers from pies, pasties and sausage rolls, bagged sweets, pizza wrappers, bags from porridge and muesli pouches, and packaging from baby wipes.

Thank you again for contacting us.

Helen Jackson, Director, Vice Chair of the Board and Board Ambassador for Climate Action

Many thanks for your question throughout the Talk to Us function. We understand our customers’ concern about the need to reduce our plastic footprint and are actively seeking any opportunities to reduce the amount of packaging we use and improve recyclability to protect our planet.

Southern Co-op benefits from the Co-op Group’s work on packaging, which is a wholly separate co-op based in Manchester, that manages our supply chain on behalf of (Federal Retail Trading Services) FRTS and they define Co-op food and packaging policies. Co-op Group has been working with WRAP (wrap.org.uk) to understand new guidance that will be coming out on loose fruit and veg packaging. This will help provide further guidance in this area for the convenience sector.

We do share your vision of reducing the use of non-recyclable plastic and are reviewing our use of packaging in particular plastic packaging. We must balance reducing packaging of fresh fruit and vegetables (such as swede) with the need to ensure a product is protected through the supply chain, the shelf life is optimised, quality control managed, and food waste is minimised.

The cling film and soft plastics around the fruit and vegetables that we sell can be recycled in 167 of our stores including Bishop’s Waltham. There are a small number of stores without soft plastics recycling bins as, due to a lack of space in those stores, it would be impractical to fit them in. The soft plastics recycling bins are located within the store and we hope they enable our members and customers to safely recycle materials that cannot be recycled at home. Our store finder shows all the services including plastic recycling for each store. (https://southern.coop/store-locator)

Thanks again for contacting us.

Helen Jackson, Director, Vice Chair of the Board and Board Ambassador for Climate Action

Thank you very much for your enquiry regarding electric charging vehicles, and for your support regarding other measures that we have taken to reduce both our own, and our customers’ footprint. These measures will help us achieve our Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) near term targets of a 50% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030, and a 17% reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030. SBTi defines and promotes best practice in emissions reductions and net zero targets in line with climate science, and the SBTi Criteria for Near-term Targets outline the minimum qualitative and quantitative criteria for near-term targets to be recognised by the SBTi.

Electric charging points are something we’re currently exploring within our retail estate. We’ve very recently installed a dual EV charging point at our store on Hawthorn Road, Bognor Regis, as a trial in partnership with Allego. Off the back of this trial, we’re assessing other locations where charging points would be suitable to install for customers.

Other measures we’ve recently taken to decarbonise our retail estate include installation of solar panels and a further rollout of thermal night blinds on refrigeration. We also have a company policy that all company cars must be either hybrid or fully electric to support the decarbonisation of our vehicles and reduce the impact that company travel has on the environment.

Thanks again for reaching out to us and for your support on our journey to minimise our impact on the environment.

Helen Jackson, Director, Vice Chair of the Board and Board Ambassador for Climate Action

Thank you for your questions regarding recovering heat from refrigeration in our stores. This is something that we’re aware of as a business and are considering alongside a suite of ither new technologies that are becoming available and more accessible.

Other technology that we’ve recently invested in for our retail estate includes the installation of solar panels, a further rollout of energy saving thermal blinds on refrigeration, optimisation of building management systems in store to ensure equipment is running efficiently and replacing refrigeration fans with a more energy efficient version.

This investment in energy saving technology will support us on our journey to reach our Science Based Targets initiatives (SBTi) near-term targets of a 50% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030 and a 17% reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030. SBTi defines and promotes best practice in emissions reductions and net zero targets in line with climate science and the SBTi Criteria for near-term targets outline the minimum qualitative and quantitative criteria for near-term targets to be recognised by the SBTi.

Thank you for reaching out to us and we’ll continue to keep our members updated on further progress in this area.

Alison Hesselberth, Board Director

Thank you for getting in touch. We look to provide a response to all views shared and questions raised and post these on our website at https://southern.coop/membership/board-of-directors. To see the responses simply click on the + next to the question or comment.

The Board regularly discusses the protection of our people. As we have stated in our responses to previous comments, it’s a sad fact that antisocial incidents such as shoplifting you’ve described occur across the country and affect the whole retail sector. The safety of our colleagues and customers is of utmost importance to us and it is for this reason that we seek to avoid physical altercations between our colleagues and shoplifters.

We have a programme of work seeking to reduce and combat incidents and regularly trial different solutions to try and tackle this worryingly prevalent problem. Security guards can be an effective protection for our stores, however the cost of placing these in all of our stores across our opening hours is prohibitive. We will therefore be guided by data and insight to determine where and when such resource is placed. As you will be aware, there are processes in place for in-store teams to report any security concerns on our ‘Disc’ system. This enables us to collate information and data centrally and in a timely fashion, to be able to monitor trends and provide the store with the relevant further assistance and support required. The Police also have access to this system.

Similar to many other retailers, we utilise technology, where possible, to help us try to prevent violence and aggression which can often arise a result of an incident of theft, and theft itself. As you are aware turnstiles are being trialled and we most certainly are also looking at store layouts and flows amongst other initiatives. Other methods we use are that we have CCTV installed which can help us to identify prolific repeat offenders. Our colleagues have the ability to be in radio contact with each other; we limit the number of key high risk products on shelves; the target products for theft are protected by tagging etc. As you are aware, we also have facial recognition technology in certain specific stores where there is a particularly high incidence of crime. I appreciate your personal views on this, however our evidence shows that this technology alongside other measures has been effective in reducing incidents of violence and theft, and ultimately helping us protect our colleagues and customers. Any solution will not necessarily work on its own and appropriate options must be considered in the light of all relevant factors affecting our business taking into account the rights of customers and colleagues.

As there isn’t one single solution to the problem, our investment not only looks at security measures we can implement to make our stores less of a target, but also looks to address why people choose to commit these crimes as well as lobbying for changes in the law to protect retail workers. We collaborate closely with police both at a localised community level and at a wider strategic level, to ensure that prolific offenders are identified and targeted appropriately based upon verified evidence and/or intel. One example is our collaboration with Operation Monster, which was a Hampshire Police operation that targeted aggravated shop theft and other retail/business crimes in the Portsmouth area and examples of its success can be found in media reports online.

Thank you for sharing your views on this subject.

Alison Hesselberth, Board Director

Thank you for contacting the Board of Directors in relation to your concern about the safety of colleagues in our Portsmouth, Tangier Road store. I fully endorse the response our Member Support team have sent you and I would like to reiterate that we as a Board and as a business take the problem very seriously.

We support all the approaches and initiatives in place; from the technology we have invested in such as CCTV, headsets so colleagues can communicate instantly with others elsewhere in the store if they need assistance and, in high risk stores, security staff, facial recognition and exit turnstiles to the fact that we do not display high levels of products attractive to shopifters. The partnerships we actively participate in both in terms of information and know how sharing but also financial support are also an important and valuable part of our response to the problem as a whole. Prevention is always our goal but we live in the real world so we have support programmes and access to counselling for colleagues affected by the incidents in stores. As a board we are updated as to these initiatives and processes designed to help us tackle the crime in our stores which has indeed become commonplace sadly.

Thank you for your concern and your support to our colleagues – we appreciate your positive feedback and we have passed your kind words on to the store in Tangier Road. Health and safety is a business priority/requirement and integral to the strategy of Southern Co-op that the Board works closely with the Chief Executive to achieve. Rest assured this is something we keep very firmly on the agenda and as a business we are constantly exploring ways to keep our colleagues and customers safe.

Alison Hesselberth, Board Director

Thank you for taking the time to contact us via our Talk to Us function regarding your concern about the antisocial theft problems at our store.

It’s a sad fact that antisocial incidents such as shoplifting you’ve described occur across the country and affect the whole retail sector. The safety of our colleagues and customers is of utmost importance to us. That’s why we’re in the process of investing over £1m in a programme working towards combating incidents like this, as they clearly have an impact not only on our colleagues, but also our communities. We have considered a number of different solutions to try and tackle this worryingly prevalent problem.

As part of our work in trying to increase safety and cut down on the opportunities for theft, we have considered your suggestion of an old-fashioned booth method of grocer in the past. Something similar was discussed as a potential solution for one of our stores but it was not deemed currently appropriate for our business.

With regards to your other suggestion of installing the football match style turnstiles, we are currently trialling entrance/exit barriers in 3 locations, with plans to extend to another 3 sites in tandem with other security proof of concepts. This is with a view to formulating a new and more appropriate level of security equipment specification for our higher risk sites.

Other methods we use are that we have CCTV installed; our colleagues have radio contact with each other; we limit the number of key high risk products on shelves; the target products for theft are protected by tagging etc and where deemed necessary we use security staff at an additional cost. We also have facial recognition technology in certain specific stores where there is a particularly high incidence of crime. Any solution will not necessarily work on its own and appropriate options must be considered in the light of all relevant factors affecting our business taking into account the rights of customers and colleagues.

As there isn’t one single solution to the problem, our investment not only looks at security measures we can implement to make our stores less of a target, but also looks to address why people choose to commit these crimes as well as lobbying for changes in the law to protect retail workers. We collaborate closely with police both at a localised community level and at a wider strategic level, to ensure that prolific offenders are identified and targeted appropriately based upon verified evidence and/or intel. One example is our collaboration with Operation Monster, which was a Hampshire Police operation that targeted aggravated shop theft and other retail/business crimes in the Portsmouth area and examples of its success can be found in media reports online.

We understand your frustrations around theft. There are processes in place for the in-store team to report any security concerns on our ‘Disc’ system. This enables us to collate information and data centrally and in a timely fashion, to be able to monitor trends and provide the store with the relevant further assistance and support. The Police also have access to this system. Depending on what is being reported, we then have various approaches in how to best handle concerns being raised by the store team.

Thank you for contacting us, and I hope the above explain the measures we’re taking to deal with this issue and clarifies your concern.

Thank you very much for your support – your positive feedback relating to the great job our store colleagues do is very much appreciated.

Jessica Danyluk, Director with special interest in End of Life Services and member of Audit and Risk Committee.

Many thanks for reaching out to us – these are very good questions that we as Directors sought to answer both prior and subsequent to the transactions. I hope you find our responses below clear and helpful.

1.How has the first few weeks of this transition faired?

The transition of the four funeral homes purchased from Midcounties Co-operative has gone very well. The new colleagues who have joined Southern Co-op under TUPE have been supported with a comprehensive onboarding programme including transition to our way of working and IT system.
We have made some initial investments to improve the front of house areas, particularly in the High Wycombe branch which have been well received.

2.What was particularly attractive about this home(s) to add them to our estate?

We were pleased to be able to acquire these funeral homes to maintain a co-operative offer for local people. They also represent a good mix of locations for operational efficiency and we were able to service them from our existing infrastructure without increasing overheads.

3. Do we know/expect tens of new customer members to join Southern after this transfer?

To date we have focused on ensuring service to the bereaved was not impacted by the change of ownership. With this transition successfully completed, we will in due course be able to address other opportunities including recruiting new members from amongst our clients in these towns.

4. I understand Midcounties sold up because it decided the mid and long run in the funerals business for a operation of their size wasn’t for them. What does southern think?

Our understanding is that Midcounties took their decision to exit the funeral sector in the context of their wider portfolio of businesses which is very different to our own.
In our case, our Strategic Plan for the Society as a whole anticipates continued development and growth from our End of Live Services businesses, which, of course, includes crematoria and natural burial grounds, neither of which were operated by Midcounties.

Helen Jackson, Director, Vice Chair of the Board and Board Ambassador for Climate Action

In response to your question, we would never want to see food in our stores going into waste if it could be feeding those most at need. We are tackling this from many different angles.

Firstly, we want to ensure that we are putting the right amount of stock into our stores – this we are doing by introducing intelligent systems to order the right amount of stock for our food stores to limit the amount that may go in the bin.

Secondly, we are working with partners to help us identify the best price to sell product nearing the end of its shelf life ensuring that more sells and less is left over at the end of the day.

There is always going to be an amount which cannot be sold and we are already able to say that none of this goes to landfill but instead is diverted to anaerobic digestion to generate energy.

In addition, we have been able to identify some products with a best before date, which although have come to the end of their shelf life are perfectly good to eat. Obviously, this does not include highly perishable items which have a “use by” date which we are obliged by law not to sell. However, for those products we can, we have extended a trial across some of our stores in Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset where we are selling products for a limited time beyond their best before dates for a nominal fee rather than see them go to waste. This is being rolled out to a further 100 of our stores through the remainder of 2021.

This year we will trial further initiatives, and we aim to identify local partners who can see the remaining product gets into the hands of those most at need.
Examples of actions to date include:

• Introduced a simplified reduction process to help our colleagues sell product near the end of its shelf life
• Created a weekly store specific bakery (ISB) production guide which has helped colleagues reduce bakery waste, on average by £4,000 per week across our estate
• Introduced a store specific hot food production guide to improve performance and improve wastage

Thank you for contacting us.

Helen Jackson, Director, Vice Chair of the Board and Board Ambassador for Climate Action

Many thanks for your recent email to us about our action on climate change. We are always keen to hear members’ views and suggestions about how we can improve, and really appreciate your thoughts.

In response to your question, this is an issue we are very keen to address. Co-op Group has now completed a proof of concept for an alternative to the cling wrap being used to wrap cages. Once agreed, plans will be shared with us through the Federal Retail and Trading Services group that we are member of.

I hope this is helpful.

Helen Jackson, Director, Vice Chair of the Board and Board Ambassador for Climate Action

Thank you for your recent email to us about our action on climate change.

As a first step we always look at whether there is a need for the packaging in the first place. Where we believe there is a need to ensure a product is protected through the supply chain, that shelf life is optimised, quality control managed, we communicate important and legal product information and we minimise food waste, our focus has been on improving material recyclability, in particular plastic recyclability. You are absolutely right in that there is a wider footprint here to consider but we believe that it is right to support a circular economy by ensuring materials are kept in use through re-use or recycling. A lot of waste ends up in the environment as well which not only becomes an eyesore but a danger to wildlife, so dealing with it responsibly helps to keep it away from our land and seas. It is important though that we think of water as a precious resource so encouraging the efficient use of water. We also create efficiencies in our recycling process through our instore collection and backhauling all unused materials from our stores to a central depot where recyclables are sent for recycling, food waste to anaerobic digestion and general waste to an energy from waste facility.

I hope this is helpful.
Thank you again for contacting us.

Helen Jackson, Director, Vice Chair of the Board and Board Ambassador for Climate Action

Many thanks for your recent email to us about our action on climate change. We are always keen to hear from our members.

Southern Co-op has absolutely no involvement in the international arms trade.

In your supplementary email you made reference to banking. The Co-operative Bank is connected to The Co-op Group, a nationwide co-operative based in Manchester. Southern Co-op has no direct relationship with Co-op Bank. I am able to confirm that our investments, and those of our pension scheme are not connected in any way to the international arms trade.

Thank you again for getting in touch

Helen Jackson, Director, Vice Chair of the Board and Board Ambassador for Climate Action

Many thanks for your recent email to us about our action on climate change. We are always keen to hear members’ views and suggestions about how we can improve, and really appreciate your thoughts.

We are unfortunately limited by the amount of space we have in our stores, so have chosen to focus on soft plastics recycling which can’t currently be catered for through local council kerbside collection. However, thank you for your suggestion and it is certainly something we will bear in mind for the future.

Thank you again for contacting us.

Helen Jackson, Director, Vice Chair of the Board and Board Ambassador for Climate Action

Thanks for your feedback. In response to your question, we’ve made some good progress but recognise there is always more we can do! A big focus for us as part of our Climate Action pathway is refrigeration. In addition to putting doors on chillers and freezers, we are replacing older refrigeration equipment, replacing refrigerant gases with those that have a lower global warming impact and we are rolling out EcoBlade technology on our fridges which improve efficiency. These twin-bladed shelf-edge strips, developed by motor racing engineer Wirth Research, use airflow to reduce cold air being lost into the aisles – the same technique used to direct airflow efficiently around racing cars. The new EcoBlade technology is expected to reduce energy consumption of the refrigeration by up to 25 per cent and acts as an invisible air curtain keeping warm air out and cool air in. If there are particular issues in a given store then we would encourage our colleagues to raise these via the store support desk and we can investigate these further.

I hope this is helpful.

Thank you again for contacting us.

Helen Jackson, Director, Vice Chair of the Board and Board Ambassador for Climate Action

Many thanks for getting in touch with us – the points you raise are important, and I’ve outlined below how we are currently addressing them, and how we hope to develop this in the future. I hope that this is helpful.

‘The Co-op can make its contribution by no longer selling products from far flung places, e.g. apples from Brazil, Australian wine, South American fruit. I WILL HAPPILY PAY MORE FOR LOCALLY SOURCED FOOD.’

The Co-op has a long-standing commitment to British producers and suppliers and we continue to work hard to ensure that wherever British fruit or vegetables are in season for the produce we sell, we will stock it. Where we can, we source fresh produce grown in Britain year-round. For example, we source 100% of our mushrooms, potatoes and carrots from the UK, throughout the year. We’ve also worked to extend the British season of many of fruit and vegetable products. For instance, when it comes to our strawberries, we have suppliers from different areas of the UK, moving locations during the season to ‘chase the sun’ to ensure its British strawberries in stock in our stores for as many months of the year as possible; and we’ve managed to extend the British season on our Tulips from 3 months to 6 months.

We also have made steps forward in recent years in the following areas:

• 100% of Co-op branded fresh meat has been British since May 2017
• 100% of Co-op branded frozen meat has been British since 2018
• 100% of Co-op branded eggs, milk, fresh cream, cheddar cheese and block butter are British

Southern Co-op has championed local food and drink suppliers for nearly 15 years and we experienced strong sales growth with our Local Flavours range in 2020 which has continued in 2021 with total retail sales growth moving into double digits showing that demand remains high for local amongst our customer-base. The local food to go, snacking and soft beverages categories have all performed exceptionally well with high demand. During 2021 we on-boarded nearly 20 new local suppliers across a number of our counties such as, coffee from the IOW, cider from Somerset, beer from Sussex and spices from Dorset. There are now around 200 local suppliers offering 2000 products to our customers in our retail stores. We are currently running an exclusive offer for our members with 25% off Local Flavours food and drink products throughout the month of November, with positive early signs of our members taking up the offer; and we are due to celebrate our 15th anniversary of Local Flavours in 2022. One of our longstanding suppliers is the Tomato Stall on the Isle of Wight.

‘Please remove plastic packaging from fresh produce.’

We understand our customers’ concerns over excessive packaging and are actively looking for opportunities to reduce the amount of packaging we use and improve recyclability.

Reducing packaging has to be balanced with the need to ensure a product is protected through the supply chain, that shelf life is optimised, quality control managed, we communicate important and legal product information and we minimise food waste.

Southern Co-op benefits from the Co-op Group’s work on packaging, who manage our supply chain on behalf of Federal Retail Trading Services (FRTS) members.

Where we use packaging the Co-op has been working to ensure that its own brand packaging is reusable or easy to recycle. We have recently introduced soft plastics recycling in 31 of our stores to enable our customers to recycle everything from biscuit wrappers to bread bags which can’t currently be recycled by local councils in kerbside collections. (https://southern.coop/local-stores-offer-soft-plastic-recycling-points/)

The Co-op Group is currently working with WRAP (wrap.org.uk) to understand new guidance that will be coming out on loose fruit and veg packaging and what that means for the convenience sector. This will help guide further action in this area.

‘Increase the price of red meat. Lower the price of plant based food.’

We need to strike the right balance with our pricing to ensure that we remain competitive and also offer our customers affordable options. We are keen to promote more plant-based foods and the Co-op has introduced a new vegan range, called GRO which features over 35 meat-free products. The new GRO range caters for the growing appetite for plant-based food and the new brand, exclusively by the Co-op, is designed with the convenience shopper in mind. Whilst the depth of distribution of this range within Southern Co-op stores is quite low at present this is gradually increasing. The Co-op Group, through whom we source the majority of the products we sell in our stores, are also looking at further product development in this area.

As part of our Climate Action plans we want to do more to make it easy for our colleagues and customers to support our goals and make low carbon choices at work and home. We agree that there is a need for awareness and education and will be using our various communications channels to support this. Our e-mails to members is one channel open to us and we are currently working on improvements to our website. Throughout COP26 we included messaging around the store and at till point which promoted some of the actions people can take and we are currently working on how we might do more of this in the future.

‘Please put BIG signs up outside your stores to tell motorists to switch off their car engines when they are waiting for someone.’

We were not aware this was an issue, but this is certainly something we can look into.

Thank you again for contacting us with your suggestions.

Joanne Gray, Director and Member of Membership and Governance Committee.

Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback on our member app, we are always looking for ways to develop the Southern Co-op member experience and appreciate any suggestions to enable us to enhance our future offering to our members.

I thought it might be helpful to share with you some of the rational behind our decision to use a progressive web app instead of the native apps some other retailers use. First and foremost, it was very much guided by our desire to make our app more inclusive for all our members in that that our web based app it isn’t tied to any specific platform . Also, native apps such as those provided in the apple or google stores rely on the user to update their software and app versions which can be cumbersome, whereas ours bypasses that issue.

Once you upload the app to your phone, it is fairly intuitive to use. As a reminder you can access our app via our website or directly via this link – https://app.southernco-op.co.uk
Once you have accessed it your phone should prompt you to save to your mobile or tablet’s home screen. A full list of FAQs can be found here – https://southern.coop/membership/members-app/membership-app-faqs

We have tried to make our app as helpful to our members as possible, for example you will see that we have provided a digital version of our membership card as well as and other membership specific offers, such as a link to our Member Benefits Portal where you can access exclusive retail discounts as well as courses and wellbeing hub. We also detail any member news and events (currently on hold due to the pandemic). You can check the opening hours and contact details of your local store or funeral home easily via our local store locator.

Thanks again for your feedback, we do hope once you’ve got used to using our app, you will enjoy the member benefits it can provide you.

Mark Ralf, Chair of the Board and Chair of the Governance Committee:

Thanks for your question about Board diversity.

Southern Co-op values the diversity of its membership and aspires to this being reflected within its Board of Directors, however it acknowledges the fundamental right of the membership to elect its Board and therefore does not set quotas to achieve diversity.

All of Southern Co-op’s Board are non-executive directors. Nine seats on the Board are elected by the members and serve for terms of three years, two of these are employees of our co-op. Any member who satisfies the minimum qualification criteria may be nominated as a candidate.

We encourage the widest involvement in the elections for our Board and are limited only by those who offer to stand and then those that the members choose to elect.

Over the last few years we have achieved great results in relation to our Board’s gender diversity – we have 5 women and 5 men serving on our Board. Whilst this is one step in the right direction, we still have some way to go in encouraging Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic members and younger members to stand in elections to our Board ​and we continue to strive to ensure that all our members are aware of the opportunities to stand as a director.  We welcome members with disabilities to the Board and over the years have ensured that arrangements are in place, as necessary, to allow full participation by all Directors.  We have, and continue to welcome members from LGBT communities to stand in elections.

We need to recognise that it would ​be very difficult to completely represent all segments of society across our trading area of the South of England ​but ​we will continue to do all we can to encourage the widest range of ​suitably qualified candidates from our membership.

Helen Jackson, Director and Member of Membership and Governance Committee

Many thanks for your enquiry. Southern Co-op shares your concern about the need to measure and reduce our plastic footprint as part of our wider commitments to protect the environment. These are outlined in Making a Difference, our sustainability plan.

The majority of food that Southern Co-op sells is purchased through our trading agreement with Federal Retail and Trading Services (FRTS), the buying group for co-operatives in the UK. Co-op Group, the wholly separate co-op based in Manchester, manages the procurement of products and packaging on behalf of FRTS and they define Co-op food and packaging policies. We have an opportunity to influence these through the trading governance arrangements in place.

We actively look for all available opportunities to reduce the amount of packaging we use, which includes a focus on plastic packaging; balancing excessive packaging with the need to ensure a product is protected through the supply chain and that food waste is reduced, shelf life is optimised and that we communicate important or legal information about the product itself.

Co-op Group has reported totals of all packaging materials sold in its annual sustainability report since 2006. Click here to see further details.

We are reviewing our use of packaging, in particular plastic packaging and we are working hard to improve packaging recyclability. We benefit from the ambitious targets set by Co-op Group, who manage the supply chain on behalf of FRTS members.

• We have now eliminated OBCPET, black and dark plastic packaging
• All own brand packaging will be easy to reuse or recycle by summer 2020
• We will eliminate single-use own brand plastic products and packaging, including the plastic you didn’t know was there, by 2023
• We will use a minimum of 50% recycled plastic in polyethylene terephthalate bottles, pots, trays and punnets and high density polyethylene bottles by 2021

These are some of our achievements to date, but improving the recyclability of our packaging and reducing single use plastic remains a core focus area:

• Almost three out of four own-brand Co-op products are now widely recyclable and in the last three years alone we have removed almost 950 tonnes of single use plastic
• Microbeads banned from Co-op products in 2001
• Plastic stems on cotton buds replaced with paper in 2006
• All Co-op branded straws are paper, and we’ve removed all packs of single use plastic straws from sale
• Our slush puppy straws were switched from plastic to paper and our milkshake straws are biodegradable
• We don’t use any plastic cutlery in our Southern Co-op Food To Go offering – Co-op Group is currently reviewing options around the use of plastic cutlery in our broader range
• R-Cups have been launched into six stores – These are the world’s first reusable coffee cup made from used paper cups
• We have removed single-use plastic carrier bags from over 70 Southern Co-op food stores and replaced them with the UK’s first widely available compostable carrier bags that can double as liners for food waste caddies
• Available in stores where the Local Authority accepts them as part of household food waste recycling, the compostable bags – along with the household food waste – can be turned into peat free compost
• We are exploring plastic alternatives to our bags for life

I hope this reply is helpful. We review our sustainability plan regularly to ensure it remains current, reflecting the issues that matter most to our business, our members and those who have an interest in our business.