Further Reading
- Retail in Society: Serving our Communities
Member News
2nd November 2011
Retailers are on the front line of the Big Society and the corporate social responsibility agenda, a parliamentary reception has heard.
Minister for employment relations and consumer and postal affairs, Ed Davey was speaking at the annual all-party retail group (APRG) and British Retail Consortium (BRC) parliamentary reception.
Davey called retailers the "embodiment" of the Big Society when referencing the Every Business Commits policy launched by the prime minister in December 2010.
Through five key areas including community engagement and promotion of employee wellbeing, Every Business Commits sets out a vision to help government and business build the Big Society.
The minister commended the retail sector for its "natural response" to the agenda and said it was very much in evidence during the riots in August this year. He commended the actions of larger retailers in supporting small retailers, particularly around insurance claims.
"You saw larger retailers forgoing their immediate access to funds to rebuild, to allow their smaller colleagues to get earlier access because they needed it," he said.
The reception saw the launch of 'Retail in Society: Serving our Communities', a new BRC study which for the first time brings together the charity and community work being undertaken by a wide range of retailers across the UK.
Case studies included within in the publication detail over £25m worth of fundraising that retail provides to help local communities.
Some of the schemes profiled within the study and raised by Davey at the reception include Timpson academies. Currently in operation inside the prisons HMP Liverpool, Wandsworth and New Hall, the academies can train up to 35 apprentices at any one time and have led to over 40 jobs for prison-leavers in the last two years alone.
In his first outing as chairman of the British Retail Consortium, Rob Templeman said all of the investment in local communities was taking place "against the backdrop of one of the toughest retail climates I can remember".
In order to help retail achieve during such a tough trading climate, Templeman said there is "much the government can do to help the sector".
One of his key demands was a review of the impending uniform business rate rise of 5.6 per cent. Templeman said that the cost would equate to £350m, at just the wrong time for the property-intensive retail sector.
"We therefore call on government to exercise its discretion and set next year's rate at a sensible and affordable level," he said.
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