Society investments, Community Energy Kickstart Fund & Swindon 105.5FM
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Published 17 Feb 2023 in Phil's blog
Society Investments - Lanesfield Nursery
Last week I had the opportunity to visit the construction site of our latest Little Pioneers nursery based at Lanesfield, Wolverhampton. A future Society investment in Childcare, the brand new, purpose-built nursery is due to launch at the beginning of September. On the day, the developers had a chance to show us around which gave me a real sense of excitement with the progress so far. A big well done to the developers who are doing a brilliant job.
It was also a pleasure to meet the new nursery manager, Charlotte Patterson, while being joined by Chief Operating Officer for Childcare, Sally Bonnar, to inspect the site ahead of the handover to our property team on 23rd March. As we countdown to the big launch in September, our developers gave us a great insight to the next few steps and what to expect for our latest Little Pioneers nursery. Watch this space!
Left to right, Sally Bonnar - Chief Operating Officer for Childcare, Charlotte Patterson - Nursery Manager and Manpreet Pangli & Anita Kaur from HKP Developers
Society Investments - Cleevelands in Cheltenham launches
Staying on the topic of Society investments, yesterday was the launch of our latest Food store at Cleevelands in Cheltenham. At a cost of £525k, the brand-new store has 15 new colleagues and will serve as an important addition to the local area. The store forms part of the Cleevelands Centre, which has a local medical surgery, pharmacy and a gym alongside our store. A warm welcome to Store Manager, Cassie Green and the team. I look forward to visiting soon.
Community Energy Kickstart Fund at Bottle Yard Studios, Bristol
This week I joined Michaela Cryer, Head of Younity, (our joint venture with Octopus Energy), on a visit to the Bottle Yard Studios in Bristol. That’s the site of a 1MW rooftop solar energy project by the Bristol Energy Cooperative and is the first project to benefit from Younity’s newly launched Community Energy Kickstart Fund.
Octopus and ourselves have invested in the Kickstart fund to help really drive renewable energy in the UK and specifically to help overcome the need for loans from banks at the start-up phase of these projects. By taking a loan from the fund instead, Community Energy groups can get quicker and cheaper access to finance that they will repay once further on with their schemes.
At the end of last year, I signed a joint letter calling on the Government to unlock renewable energy generation capacity and urging them to invest in renewable energy. It was really good to see first-hand how we are stepping into that gap at the moment and helping community groups add more renewable energy to the UK. We’ll keep you updated as to progress with this and other projects.
Visiting Radio station – Swindon 105.5FM
Last week I had the chance to visit Swindon 105.5FM the radio station! The visit was a follow-up after we donated a £500 grant to go towards the creation of a new radio show ‘Spectrum’, which is mostly run by young people with Autism. Their values at the station really do align with ours being a community radio station and while I was there, I saw how this linked in with the local community. It was great to meet Shirley and the team on the day. Have a watch of the video update...
Meeting Shirley and Oliver from Swindon 105.5
10% Member Discount Day – 24th February
With ambitious plans to increase our membership base and drive member trade to 35%, we are continuously looking for ways to bring to life the value of membership which will encourage customers to join us and our members to shop with us.
That’s why next Friday, we are running the ‘10% off Member Discount Day’. An exciting trial in 100 Food stores, this will be a great incentive for customers to become members and should encourage all members to shop with us on the day. I know many of the team have been working hard on this, so I would like to give a big thank you to everyone in preparation for the trial next week. Just to note, this discount cannot be used in conjunction with the enhanced 20% colleague discount.
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