The Co-operative Group has said that votes for election to its members’ council have been miscounted, and in another development, that it has been forced to extend the period in which members can cast their votes in the run-up to Saturday’s annual general meeting.
Votes were supposed to have been registered by noon on Wednesday but the deadline was extended when problems were encountered by members casting their votes through the website.
The UK’s biggest mutual has also informed individuals standing for election to the members’ council – made up of 100 or so representatives of its owner-members – that they had been incorrectly informed that they had been elected.
The individuals affected were those wishing to represent the independent societies on the members’ council. These independent societies – such as Midcounties – together own 22% of the Co-op, while the remainder is owned by around 7 million individual members who use the group’s shops, funeral homes and other services.
The error was caused when certain votes were not weighted according to the scale of the relationship between each independent society and the main group. It resulted in two candidates being incorrectly advised that they had been successful while two others, who were told they had been elected, were informed that they had been unsuccessful.
The elections are being held as part of a sweeping reform of the Co-op following the scandal in its banking arm which drove the group to a record £2.5bn loss in 2014. Controversy is also raging about the way candidates were selected to represent members on the group board because a shortlist of six was reduced to three – which avoided contested elections.
Allan Leighton, the chairman of the Co-op, and Lesley Reznicek, president of the members’ council, have now pledged to make efforts to hold contested elections next year. Their move won the support of the East of England Co-op, which had sought a legal opinion that showed that the election process was flawed.
After Leighton’s pledge, the East of England said it had now been “assured by the group board and the president of the council that the election process will be reviewed for next year and we trust that the objective will be to achieve contested elections for the 2016 AGM”. Midcounties has said it could consider an injunction to stop the process.
For the first time, more than 2 million members have been able to vote at the AGM, a change from the past when 100 or so representatives attended the meeting.
