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Posts tagged Supermarkets
Waitrose launches UK brand expansion and plans more foreign outlets
Mar 14th
Managing director Mark Price aims to keep fast-growing upmarket grocer ahead of rival M&S
Waitrose boss Mark Price is drawing up plans to transform the upmarket food chain into a consumer brand available in thousands of non-Waitrose shops in the UK and overseas. He believes the Waitrose label has the potential to be a big “fmcg” – fast moving consumer goods – name like Heinz or Kellogg’s, which he can sell to other retail businesses, rather than just direct to shoppers.
He has similar ambitions for the Duchy Originals brand, founded in 1990 by the Prince of Wales. Waitrose signed a licensing deal with the struggling royal label last autumn, which gives the John Lewis-owned grocer the right to manufacture, distribute and sell all Duchy goods in the UK. Price said there would be more than 300 Duchy products by the end of the year and there was potential for many more.
He said: “What we are trying to do is give access to the brand and it is not just about owning shops. It is about taking a creative approach and making products available to as many people as possible. We are looking to work with partners.”
The plan to sell Waitrose goods in other stores will be kickstarted this month when Price unveils details of a deal that could eventually see Waitrose food sold in more than 700 Boots outlets. Sections of Boots’ stores will be transformed into mini-Waitroses, with the grocer’s own fixtures, fittings and signage. In return, Waitrose will sell a range of Boots health and beauty goods in its own stores.
Last year Waitrose defied predictions it would be battered by the recession and emerged as the fastest-growing big grocer, chalking up a sales increase of more than 11% to in excess of £4.5bn, trouncing upmarket rival Marks & Spencer. “We expect to be the fastest growing again this year,” Price said.
Sales to overseas supermarkets are also to be ramped up. “Waitrose is seen as a really premium brand outside the UK,” said Price. The grocer has already more than doubled business-to-business overseas sales to more than £100m over the past two year, exporting to 25 countries including Thailand, the Bahamas, India and China. But Price said there was much more potential.
The grocer is also keen to open more franchised outlets overseas, especially in the Middle East. Two stores in Dubai are chalking up 60% annual sales growth and franchises have been awarded for Bahrain, Oman and Abu Dhabi. Price said there would soon be 20-23 Middle East outlets.
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Violence and abuse rife in food factories
Mar 13th
Supermarket suppliers under fire as one-fifth of workers interviewed for inquiry report being pushed or hit
Thousands of workers in Britain’s lucrative food industry are being subjected to widespread mistreatment and exploitation, including physical and verbal abuse and degrading working conditions, according to an inquiry published today.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said it has uncovered significant evidence of abuse among producers supplying Britain’s big supermarkets. The inquiry includes reports from meat factory workers who say they have had frozen burgers thrown at them by line managers, and accounts of pregnant women being forced to stand for long periods or perform heavy lifting under threat of the sack.
It also contained reports from women with heavy periods and people with bladder problems on production lines being denied toilet breaks and forced to endure the humiliation of bleeding and urinating on themselves.
One-fifth of workers interviewed, from across England and Wales, reported being pushed, kicked or having things thrown at them, while a third had experienced or witnessed verbal abuse.
The EHRC said some examples, such as forcing workers to do double shifts when ill or tired, were in breach of the law and licensing standards, while others were a “clear affront to respect and dignity”.
Migrant workers are the most affected because one-third of permanent workers and two-thirds of agency workers in the industry are migrants, but British and other agency employees face similar ill-treatment, the report found. More than eight in 10 of the 260 workers who gave evidence to the commission said agency workers were treated worse than directly employed staff. The report found that 80% of processed meat goes to Britain’s supermarkets, and that the main reason agency staff are used is to meet the big stores’ demand.
Yesterday, Jack Dromey, the deputy general secretary of Unite union, which has campaigned for better rights for supermarket supply chain workers for four years, said: “Britain’s supermarkets should hang their heads in shame.”
Neil Kinghan, the EHRC director general, said: “We have heard stories of workers subjected to bullying, violence and being humiliated and degraded by being denied toilet breaks. Some workers feel they have little choice but to put up with these conditions out of economic necessity. Others lack the language skills to understand and assert their rights.
“While most supermarkets are carrying out audits of their suppliers, our evidence shows that these audits are not safeguarding workers and they clearly need to take steps to improve them. The processing firms themselves and the agencies supplying their workers also need to pay more than lip-service to ensuring that workers are not subjected to unlawful and unethical treatment.”
Half of agencies and a third of processing firms said it was difficult to recruit British workers and that they thought they were deterred by the pay and conditions. A few British workers spoke of their difficulty registering for work with some agencies who supply almost exclusively Eastern European workers, which would be unlawful under the Race Relations Act.
Ian Livesay, the chief executive of the food picking and processing regulator, the Gangmasters Licencing Authority (GLA), said exploitation of workers was unacceptable and welcomed the report’s recognition that the GLA has helped to improve standards in agencies and labour suppliers. He said: “We fully agree with the report’s recommendation that supermarkets have a key role to play and, as the report recognises, we have signed an agreement with all the major retailers and their key suppliers to share information with us on serious breaches of our standards in their supply chain.”
The government had recently increased its funding by £500,000 this year to cover enforcement and it now has 90 staff dedicated to stamping out abuse, he said.
Mark Boleat, chairman of the Association of Labour Providers, questioned the commission’s methodology and suggested it had sought out workers who were experiencing abuse. He said: “How many workers did they interview? There are thousands in the meat industry. The workers are not a representative sample. I’ve never heard anything like that.”
He said that some of the recommendations, such as paying workers for travelling time and engaging workers on contracts of employment rather than contracts for services, were impossible “unless there is a commitment from retailers and labour users to meet such costs, and past experience suggests that this is unlikely”. If they were forced to offer contracts, many of its members would go bust, he said.
While it revealed many abuses, the EHRC report also highlighted examples of good practice, particularly when some firms did not differentiate between agency staff and directly employed workers.
The commission recommendations include: supermarkets improving their auditing of suppliers; processing firms and agencies improving recruitment practices, working environments and the ability of workers to raise issues of concern; and for the government to provide sufficient resources for the GLA to help safeguard the welfare and interests of workers.
Dromey said: “Supermarkets have driven down costs along their supply chain with tens of thousands of workers paying the price, suffering discrimination and unfair treatment.
“A two-tier labour market has been created, exploiting migrant agency workers on poorer conditions of employment and undercutting directly employed workers on better conditions of employment. That divides workforces and damages social cohesion in local communities. We welcome the call from the EHRC for workers doing the same job to be paid the same.”
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Fraudster who conned supermarkets with free range scam jailed
Mar 11th
Sainsbury’s and Tesco among stores caught out by wholesaler who passed off battery produce as organic
For those who made the conscious decision to spend more on free range or organic eggs, it was worth paying a premium to know the hens that laid them had been kept in ethical conditions.
But those people who ended up paying over the odds for Keith Owen’s eggs may feel a little less warm inside after it emerged the 44-year-old egg wholesaler had scammed all the major supermarkets and numerous small shops by passing off about 100m battery farmed eggs as free range or organic.
Owen, a married father-of-two from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, was jailed for three years today and forced to surrender the £3m profit he had made by “dishonestly and systematically” mis-describing eggs over a two-year period. The fraud abused “well-intentioned public trust” by scamming innocent customers who had paid extra to ensure better animal welfare, Worcester crown court heard.
Defra, which brought the prosecution, said it was the biggest case of its kind it had ever investigated.
Owen ran Heart of England Eggs Unlimited, an egg-packing business that supplied bigger packing companies, which, in turn, provided the vast majority of eggs to the well-known supermarkets, including Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Tesco, as well as smaller retailers.
Last week he pleaded guilty to three charges of fraudulent accounting which involved him altering records to disguise the fact he was buying eggs laid by caged hens and selling them for a vast profit after “mis-describing” them in paperwork.
His barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC, suggested his client was not alone in creating what he described as “mischief” in the egg industry.
“It’s not the case that all those to whom Mr Owen supplied eggs were concerned to ensure the provenance of the eggs was as described,” said Kelsey-Fry, adding it would be “inappropriate” to elaborate.
Passing sentence, the judge said Owen had made very substantial profits at the expense of “real-life victims” who believed they were buying premium eggs.
Describing Owen as the firm’s guiding mind, the judge told the managing director: “Imprisonment there must be, because the offences are plainly so serious that only a sentence of imprisonment will suffice. This was all a carefully planned and executed fraud by false accounting. By greed, you have corrupted and destroyed the once-legitimate business which you have known all your life.”
At the time of the fraud, between 2004 and 2006, farmers could expect a price of about 90p for a dozen organic eggs, 70p for free range and 35p for cage eggs. As a “middle man” wholesaler, Owen would normally make a few pence profit per dozen. But by passing off cage eggs as free range, he could make an extra 35p for every 12 eggs he sold. In a market where demand outstripped supply, he seized the opportunity to make a lot of money.
Richard Jones, a Defra official who investigated the case, said today that Owen was such a significant player in the free range egg market that after he closed down his business two years ago, a number of supermarkets, including Somerfield, had to start sourcing free range eggs from abroad.
The court heard that Owen did not only buy in cheap battery hen eggs in order to dupe customers further down the line, he also bought in huge quantities of so-called “industrial eggs”. These do not meet the quality requirements for sale to the public; instead they can be used only in processed foods once liquefied.
Murmurings began circulating in the egg industry in 2004 that there were vastly more British free range and organic eggs being sold in shops than could ever possibly be laid in UK farms.
At the same time, investigators from the Egg Marketing Inspectorate (EMI) noticed during routine checks that eggs coming from Heart of England were not at all they were purported to be. Because all eggs look the same to the naked eye, the law requires that each egg is stamped with a unique number indicating where, and in what conditions, it was laid. Paperwork indicating origin and type must accompany the eggs all along the supply chain.
But when inspectors checked a selection of Owen’s allegedly free range eggs using a strong ultraviolet light, the shells bore wire marks – a tell-tale sign that they had been laid not on a bed of straw, or even artificial turf, as farming regulations stipulate, but in a metal cage.
There were also complaints from lorry drivers who arrived at Owen’s farms to drop off consignments of caged eggs and then pick up free range or organic eggs. A number of drivers reported to their trade union that they were made to wait hours to pick up their deliveries and suspected the eggs they delivered were being relabelled and sold back to them that day.
All of Owen’s major contracts were to supply British eggs, bearing the British Lion hallmark. But investigators from Defra discovered that he was regularly buying eggs from the continent and passing them off as homegrown.
He used another of his companies, Owens Eggs, to disguise the accounting fraud. Owens Eggs was a legitimate business selling organic eggs laid in a barn on the same site as the Heart of England business. He laundered money by selling organic eggs from Owens Eggs to Heart of England at a hugely inflated price – £10-£40 a dozen at a time when others were selling a dozen for no more than £1.
Investigators found Owen had not only falsified records with real suppliers but also invented firms that had supposedly provided him with premium eggs. He was banned from being a company director for seven years.
A Sainsbury’s spokesman said: “We have the highest standards of quality for all our products, and the eggs we sell are either Woodland eggs or Lion Mark eggs from non-caged flocks. So we were naturally very angry and concerned to learn that we and other retailers were the victims of this fraud.
“We purchased the eggs from a long-term supplier in good faith and it is important to note that at no point did we have any contact with Mr Owen or Heart of England Unlimited.”
The British Free Range Egg Producers Association said: “As a result of this case, the British Egg Industry Council with the ‘Lion’, have introduced a raft of measures, one of which is the stamping of all eggs since January 2010. Consumers can therefore now be reassured that eggs cannot be tampered with as in this case.”
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Egg boss jailed for ‘free range’ fraud
Mar 11th
• Supermarket customers duped in two-year, £3m scam
• Lawyer claims client is far from industry’s only bad egg
A Midlands businessman was jailed for three years today after admitting making a fortune by fraudulently passing off battery farm eggs as free range or organic.
Around 100m mislabelled eggs sold by Keith Owen ended up on the shelves of supermarkets including Sainsbury’s and Tesco. That the fraud was able to carry on for two years while he made a £3m profit raises questions for the food industry about the provenance of goods.
Owen, 44, from Bromsgrove, in Worcestershire, ran Heart of England Eggs Unlimited, which supplied eggs to major packing companies that in turn supplied them to supermarkets and smaller retailers.
He pleaded guilty at Worcester crown court to three charges of fraudulent accounting, relating to altering his records to disguise the fact he was buying in eggs laid by caged hens and selling them on for a profit after relabelling or “misdescribing” them in paperwork.
Prosecutors said Owen had “dishonestly and systematically passed off millions of battery farm eggs as free range/organic eggs”.
Amanda Pinto QC said: “The victims of Keith Owen’s false accounting were not only the direct customers of Heart of England, but also the public, as well as the legitimate egg producers.
“The ultimate customer, a member of the public buying these eggs, would have received inferior eggs – sometimes even eggs not fit for sale to the public – or eggs produced by hens kept without the stringent welfare schemes from which they were said to benefit.”
Owen’s barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC, suggested his client was far from the only one creating what he described as “mischief” in the egg industry.
“It’s not the case that all those who Mr Owen supplied eggs were concerned to ensure that the provenance of the eggs was as described,” he said, adding it would be “inappropriate” to elaborate.
At the time of Owen’s fraud, between 2004 and 2006, farmers could expect to receive a price of around 90p per dozen for organic eggs, 70p for free range and 35p for cage eggs. As a “middleman” wholesaler, Owen would normally make a few pence profit per dozen, but by passing off cage eggs as free range he could make an extra 35p profit for every 12 eggs he sold.
The court heard that Owen not only bought in cheap battery hen eggs, he also bought in huge quantities of so-called “industrial eggs”. These do not meet the quality requirements for sale to the public, and instead are meant to be used only in processed foods.
The fraud came to light in 2004 when allegations began circulating in the egg industry that there were vastly more British free range and organic eggs being sold in shops than could ever possibly be laid in UK farms. At the same time, investigators from the Egg Marketing Inspectorate noticed during routine checks that eggs coming from Heart of England were not at all what they purported to be.
Because all eggs look the same to the naked eye, the law requires that each egg is stamped with a unique number indicating where the egg was laid and in what conditions. Paperwork must accompany eggs transported through the supply chain to indicate their origin and type.
When inspectors checked a selection of Owen’s allegedly free range eggs using ultraviolet light, the shells bore telltale wire marks – a sure sign that they had been laid not on a bed of straw or even Astroturf, as farming regulations stipulate, but in a metal cage.
There were also complaints from lorry drivers who arrived at Owen’s farms to drop off consignments of caged eggs and then to pick up free range or organic eggs. A number of drivers reported to their trade union that they were made to wait hours to pick up their deliveries and suspected that the same eggs they had delivered were being relabelled and then sold back to them the same day.
All of Owen’s major contracts were to supply British eggs bearing the British Lion hallmark. But investigators from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs discovered that he was regularly buying eggs from the continent and passing them off as home-grown.
He used another of his companies, Owens Eggs, to disguise the accounting fraud. Owens Eggs was a legitimate business selling organic eggs laid in a barn, on the same site as the Heart of England egg-packing business. Owen tried to mask the fraud by selling organic eggs from Owens Eggs to Heart of England at an extremely inflated price – £10-£40 per dozen at a time when other producers were selling a dozen for no more than £1.
Owen agreed under a confiscation order to surrender £3m of the profit he made from selling the misdescribed eggs, and will not be allowed to be a company director for seven years.
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Profits bloom at John Lewis with growth spurt from Waitrose
Mar 7th
Department store group John Lewis expects to reward its employees with a bonus worth about seven weeks wages after bumper trading in second half
The John Lewis group is expected to hand an annual bonus worth more than seven weeks’ pay to its workforce this week as the retailer celebrates record trading over the past six months.
The group, which operates the Waitrose supermarket chain as well as department stores, will report full-year profits on Thursday that are expected to be far better than even its most optimistic executives had hoped.
The exact level of the staff bonus will not be finally agreed until a board meeting in London on Wednesday, but it is expected to be about 14% of basic salary. Last year the 70,000 staff received 13%, while in 2008, before the recession set in, they were handed 20%.
The John Lewis group is a partnership owned by its workers, and all staff – from the chairman Charlie Mayfield down to Saturday shelf-stackers – get the same percentage payout.
Nick Bubb, retail analyst at Arden Partners, said that the group “had a fantastic second half”.
At the half-year, the group’s profits were down 20% and would have been far worse without Waitrose, which defied predictions that shoppers would defect to cheaper rivals in the downturn. However, the 27-strong John Lewis department store chain was battered by the recession. Profits crashed more than 50% as sales of big-ticket items such as furniture all but dried up.
Bubb reckons profits over the past six months have been a third up on last year’s levels and that the group is likely to record pre-tax profits of about £315m, up from £280m last year.
Waitrose has been the star performer in the grocery business over the past year as shoppers snapped up its Essentials range of basic foods. Last week, the grocer’s managing director, Mark Price, said that he aimed to double sales to £10bn in a decade.
The John Lewis chain, however, also had big expansion plans, but has been forced to abandon its goal of opening 10 new department stores as a result of the recession.
Instead, the managing director, Andy Street, has started launching smaller John Lewis at Home stores in retail parks. The first, in Poole last October, has beaten all targets and a second is planned in Croydon. Two more were approved last week, and if they are a success, a rollout of up to 50 such outlets will follow.
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Tesco snubbed in first round of battle for Norfolk supermarket
Mar 4th
Farmer persuades councillors to back ‘green alternative’ scheme despite opposition from planning officers
A former corporate boss turned farmer was today celebrating victory in the first round of his battle to keep Tesco out of his Norfolk town and bring in the rival Waitrose in its place.
Clive Hay-Smith’s Greenhouse Community Project persuaded councillors his plan for a green alternative for Sheringham was a winner despite opposition from local planning officers.
Hay-Smith, once an executive in the Pearson media empire said: “It has restored my faith in democracy … It was very clear officers were not happy with the decision.”
The decision by North Norfolk council’s development committee will not be confirmed until it has taken legal advice. Officials had told the councillors that the plans would cause the town “material harm”.
Waitrose are to build and run the supermarket on a site on the edge of Sheringham having joined the scheme in December. Hay-Smith is to fund a food academy in nutrition and cooking skills.
A spokesman for Tesco said: “We’re surprised. Planning officers made it clear that the Waitrose application would be detrimental to Sheringham town centre and local shops. The councillors’ decision is at odds with government planning policy to protect the vitality of town centres.”
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Asda and Unite to tackle migrant discrimination
Mar 4th
Supermarket giant will require its suppliers to stop practice of paying migrants less than native workers
The supermarket group Asda announced today that it has reached agreement with the union Unite to tackle discrimination against migrant workers in its UK meat and poultry factories.
Under the deal Asda will require its suppliers to stop the practice of paying migrants less than indigenous employees for the same work and to eradicate the culture of bullying and harassment that has characterised much of the industry.
The move comes as the leading supermarkets brace themselves for the results of an inquiry by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into conditions in the UK meat sector.
The EHRC’s report, due this month, is expected to be highly damaging to the reputation of both the supermarkets and their suppliers.
It is thought it will confirm that discrimination, which has fuelled racial tensions, is rife in chicken and red meat factories around the country.
Ahead of the report, Marks & Spencer has also been piloting an “ethical model factory” with one of its chicken suppliers.
The deal with Asda however marks a breakthrough for the union, as it covers the whole of Asda’s meat supply chain of 29 companies.
Asda says it will require its suppliers to create permanent jobs for agency workers after a fixed period and to pay them equally for the same work.
It has also brought all its meat suppliers together to address unacceptable practices raised by the unions: these include migrants having to clock off for unpaid toilet breaks, and being required to “hot boot” with other shift workers rather than being supplied with their own safety boots.
Unite estimates that around 6,000 workers, most of them migrants, could win better rates of pay as the agreement is implemented.
The UK will eventually be bound by the new EU Working Time Directive that aims to end inequalities between permanent and temporary labour, but British companies have been allowed by the government until the end of 2011, the longest permitted time, to implement it.
Asda has chosen to move ahead of the legal requirement.
Unite has conducted an unprecedented campaign since 2005 to organise all workers in the sector, both migrant and indigenous.
It says that when it began the recruitment drive,an estimated 40% of workers in the UK meat sector were agency workers, most of them migrants, even in off-peak periods, and union membership was low.
Over 26,000 out of a UK total of 45,000 meat workers are now members of Unite. In five years the union has won recognition for collective bargaining in 89% of poultry factories and 61% of red meat factories.
Unite’s deputy general secretary, Jack Dromey, welcomed Asda’s initiative. “For years, supermarkets have driven down costs with tens of thousands of workers paying the price with discriminatory and unfair practices that divide workforces. Asda has not waited for the EHRC report but has acted. It is a matter of regret that for most of Asda’s competitors the word “ethical” is but a logo on the letterhead which is not put seriously into practice.”
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Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal: food’s oddest couple?
Mar 3rd
Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal are getting together courtesy of Waitrose. What other remarkable food partnerships have good taste and common sense robbed us of?
Here’s one from the life imitating, well, if not art, then whimsy department: a year or two back we ran an April fool piece announcing that Delia Smith had enlisted the help of Heston Blumenthal to help her ‘go molecular’. She was, we alleged, working with the Fat Duck chef to create homemade spam, prepared sous vide, a warm jelly version of her chocolate bread and butter pudding and a shepherd’s pie ice cream. Oh, how we laughed. The more so when the Telegraph news desk called the BBC to check the story, and Blumenthal’s own deputy almost flew into a rage because he had been kept out of the loop. Ridiculous. Because such a thing could never happen.
Or perhaps it could. Waitrose, the fancy supermarket chain where the godless middle-classes go to worship, today announced that it has signed up both Delia and Blumenthal to act as “food ambassadors for the Waitrose brand, sharing their expertise and showcasing recipes”. Which means they will be fronting adverts and bigging up the ingredients available in the supermarket. It is an obvious marriage. Delia creates recipes for the home cook, as does Blumenthal – though in the case of the latter, only if you happen to live in a house equipped with its own Hadron Collider, Magnetic Resonance Imaging system and a bespoke collection of pipettes.
Now some of you will respond with a shrug of almost Gallic intensity, and want to have a long moan about highly paid TV personalities taking the corporate dollar. Some of you will, as usual, want to bark ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ at Blumenthal. Perhaps this time round we could take all that as read; we do like a little variety in our comments.
What intrigues us more is the notion of unlikely culinary marriages. If Delia and Heston, the matter and anti-matter of the culinary world, can be partnered what other possibilities are there out there? What wonders would the teaming of Bernard Matthews and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall produce? Surely we are ready for the impeccably sourced, organically-reared, hand-fed gastronomically re-engineered turkey twizzler?
Would not Gary Rhodes, famed for his precision, his religious devotion to the measuring jug and the weighing scales, make sweet music with darling Nigella, who has never knowingly weighed or measured anything in her life? And we would just kill to see Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White re-enact the naked fireside wrestling scene from Women in Love. They’re not actually food opposites in any way, those two. We’re just a bit pervy like that.
Still you get the idea. What remarkable food partnerships have good taste and common sense robbed us of? If Heston and Delia, a pairing we literally regarded as a culinary joke, can finally be brought together, surely anyone can?
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Can a Norfolk farmer foil Tesco with his green alternative?
Mar 3rd
Clive Hay-Smith will find out tomorrow if an eco-Waitrose teamed with his food academy in Sheringham will get the go-ahead instead of a Tesco superstore
A former corporate executive will discover tomorrow whether his battle to halt Tesco’s plans to build a supermarket in his town and provide what he claims is a greener alternative has been successful.
Clive Hay-Smith’s efforts to overturn Tesco’s 14-year interest in Sheringham, Norfolk, and bring in a rival instead, will cost him at least £2m if his crusade ends in failure.
If it is successful, it will cost him far more. While Waitrose will fund the development of what it promises will be its greenest store yet, Hay-Smith intends to bankroll the building of a food academy on the same site, offering training in nutrition and cooking skills, before the business is handed over to a charity. He has already moved community allotments, and increased their number, as part of his campaign.
The rival ambitions of Tesco and Hay-Smith, 52, former president of Pearson Assessment and Testing, part of the giant Pearson media empire, and now a local farmer, will be tested tomorrow before the planning committee of north Norfolk district council. “I am not an eco-warrior,” said Hay-Smith, who has had links to the town since the 1960s, but whose direct interest in Tesco’s efforts to build a store in the town started four years ago.
“I find it odd they should be regarded as a panacea to Sheringham … I am not interested in commercial gain. It is about how can we be creative and not just build a box selling cheap cannelloni.”
Hay-Smith, who founded the Greenhouse Community Project to promote his alternative to “just another of thousands of ‘Tesco towns’”, said: “I don’t have an exotic lifestyle. I have made my money and rather than spend it on fast cars, I will pootle about.”
His initial approaches to Waitrose to become involved in Sheringham had foundered, he said, because then the company had thought a Tesco store was eventually “a done deal”, he said. But in December 2009, the company had come aboard, a relief for Hay-Smith, who has conceded his lack of retail experience.
Waitrose said it was planning its greenest ever store, bringing together elements from existing stores, such as rainwater harvesting and new refrigeration methods, and will install its first ever sedum plant roof – to improve insulation and reduce water run off – and an electric bus service. It was also investigating the provision of an electric vehicle for home deliveries. Supporters of the plans include the Sheringham and District Preservation Society.
Tesco’s plans for the town have for years aroused both vigorous support and opposition through websites, petitions and letter-writing.
The company, which already has 2,362 stores in the UK, said: “There are a large number of local residents who wish to see a Tesco store in Sheringham.”
The latest plans are for a smaller store than those for a previous unsuccessful attempt, although Tesco may yet revive legal action to overturn its dismissal by a planning inspector.
Council officers prefer Tesco’s plans because they say they are near the centre of town. Their report to councillors says the impact on the vitality and viability of other shops is considered “on balance” to be acceptable.
Hay-Smith’s proposed complex would be about a kilometre walk from the centre of Sheringham, and on an inferior site, according to the report. Despite some “laudable” intentions, it would cause “material harm” to the town.
The local branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England said the planning decision will be a test case for new government planning guidance, alleging that planning officers have not yet taken sufficient account of the wider economic impact of either store plan, including jobs and skills that may be lost.
It is opposing the Tesco plan and taking no position on the alternative. The council says its handling of the plans is not “materially altered” by the change.
• Jonathan Glancey: The Tesco chumps of Norfolk
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EHRC food factories report: Perfect storm has led to a race to the bottom | Felicity Lawrence
Mar 13th
Posted by Felicity Lawrence in Business
No comments
That such conditions exist is a scandal, and all the more appalling for having happened under Labour’s watch
We are where we were: that’s the insiders’ view. The EHRC report has simply put an official stamp on what many of us have known – and been deeply worried about – since early 2000. A combination of factors – deregulation, globalisation, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the formation of new pools of labour thanks to the expansion of the EU – led to a race to the bottom in terms of labour standards. The food and drink sector, driven by the supermarkets, has been at the forefront of this. New technology that allows supermarkets to order at the last minute only what they know they can sell has resulted in an unprecedented casualisation of labour, not just in rich western countries but in the poorer countries, too. Labour standards have been driven down everywhere.
The impact has been obvious on the ground for a very long time. In the UK the effect is particularly apparent in rural areas – but because many of these areas are Conservative, the government for too long ignored the protests of local workers, or dismissed them as xenophobic hostility to migrants.
In factories and on big industrial farms there has been an incredible transformation of work – such things as 24/7 shift patterns, and the constant pressure to cut costs have turned what used to be decent jobs into terrible ones. These newly terrible jobs have usually been taken by migrants, often illegal. In this climate, abuse and exploitation flourish, and racial tensions grow as people see cheaper foreign workers being used to undercut local, more established workers.
In 2005 the unions began a massive programme of reorganisation – collecting facts and figures, attempting to organise casual and migrant workers, and campaigning on these issues. But because the whole industry is riddled with subcontractors, blame is all too easily shifted down the line. Labour legislation exists which outlaws practices exposed in this report, and this legislation has been strengthened – but too often it hasn’t been enforced, and regulators were deliberately not given sufficient resources to enforce it. The Gangmaster Licensing Authority (GLA) in particular is very underfunded.
Journalists have exposed individual examples of exploitation. The unions have been trying to fight it. Workers have expressed outrage. But government and industry have insisted that the abuses were isolated incidences. The abuse detailed in the report cannot be dismissed – the EHRC highlights that it is a systemic failure to protect people. It is a structural problem that has set labour rights back several decades.
When it comes to recommending what should happen, the report is weak. The EHRC seems shy of using its power to litigate and recommends that the industry puts its house in order voluntarily. This won’t work. The report also recommends giving more money to the GLA for enforcement, but in the current climate this is surely wishful thinking.
Voluntary measures haven’t worked, and won’t work in the future. The system is fundamentally wrong and needs to change. You have to regulate; you have to litigate and enforce. That such conditions exist in the UK is a scandal, and all the more appalling for having happened under Labour’s watch.