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/member-benefits/app/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.

Beverly Wyatt, Director, Member of the Governance and Membership Committee

Thank you for taking the time to reach out to our Board of Directors with your disappointing experience regarding the use of newspaper coupons and membership offers combined.

As per your previous correspondence with the Customer Services team, I understand that you are not able to use your newspaper coupon and an All Yours coupon at the same time, as once applied through the till, the newspaper coupon value takes the balance due amount below the spend threshold of the All Yours coupon.

We do understand the frustration this causes. Please be assured that we are continuing to look into this issue with our Operations Team and till software providers to identify whether both vouchers could be accepted in one transaction in the future.

Your patience is appreciated, and we thank you for your continued custom in our stores.

John Lay, Director, Vice Chair of the Board

We can confirm that The Southern Co-operative Limited is still very much in operation but you’ll appreciate we are affected by these difficult times in the same way as other retailers and the UK as a whole. This can be unsettling as changes are often required to deal with these challenges.

We have had to look very closely at how we do business to identify what we need to do to make us more efficient in the face of these challenges so we can withstand them and boost our resilience generally in the current economic climate.

As a result, there have been initiatives which we are implementing both to encourage more members to shop with us and also put sound measures in place to ensure that we continue successfully serving our communities as we have done for the last 150 years.

I hope this reassures you that your board of directors together with the business as a whole are working to safeguard the long-term interests of Southern Co-op.