Day: March 7, 2018

The first industry-led Retail Sector Council was officially launched today (7 March 2018) by Retail Minister Andrew Griffiths and Richard Pennycook, Chairman of Fenwick, The Hut Group and Howden Joinery Group.

The Council will meet regularly with industry to discuss the challenges the sector faces. They will review how best retailers could adapt to changing consumer behaviour, the business environment and opportunities such as the development of new technologies to improve customer service, the chances to grow skills through a sector push on high-value training and ways to boost sector productivity and its economic health.

Senior management from Boots, Amazon and other renowned retailers will sit on the Council as well as the British Retail Consortium. Together, with government, they will provide expert advice to the sector and contribute to its future direction.

Retail Minister Andrew Griffiths said:

The UK’s retail sector is undergoing rapid structural changes with consumers increasingly favouring online shopping and rising operating costs for retailers.

Our new collaborative Retail Sector Council will bring government and industry together to look at how best to ensure the industry adapts to meet the changing demands of consumers.

Richard Pennycook, co-chair of the Retail Sector Council:

I am delighted to be co-chairing the first Retail Sector Council, which comes at a moment of unprecedented change for our sector. Retail is one of the largest private sector employers in the country, and the Council will provide strategic oversight of the challenges we are facing by seeking positive change and increased productivity.

“We will be working together with industry and government to deliver our vision for the future of retail.

The UK’s retail sector is a driving force in the economy and essential to our high streets, local and regional communities. The formation of the council follows other government action to create a Britain fit for the future including the government’s response to the independent Taylor Review, which ensures employment law and practices keep pace with the modern ways of working, and its ambitious Industrial Strategy which sets out a long term plan to boost the productivity and earning power of businesses and people throughout the UK.

In 2016, the retail sector added a gross value of £94.6 billion to the UK economy; the new Council will aim to address key sector issues including skills and increasing productivity.

Notes to editors

Retail Sector Council members:

• Andrew Griffiths, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Minister for Small Business, Consumers and Corporate Responsibility, Co-Chair, Retail Council
• Richard Pennycook, Co-Chair, Retail Council, Chairman of Fenwick, The Hut Group and Howden Joinery Group and previously CEO of the Co-operative Group. Richard is also Chair of the British Retail Consortium and lead non-executive board member of the Department for Education
• Doug Gurr, UK Country Manager, Amazon
• Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman, John Lewis Partnership
• Elizabeth Fagan, Senior Vice President, Managing Director Boots UK & ROI
• Nick Beighton, CEO, ASOS
• Ursula Lidbetter, CEO, Lincolnshire Cooperative
• John Hannett, General Secretary, Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers
• Diane Savory, Chair, GFirst LEP
• Victoria Robertshaw, CEO, Keelham Farm Shop
• Helen Dickinson, CEO, British Retail Consortium
• James Lowman, CEO, Association of Convenience Stores

The Charity Commission, the independent regulator of charities in England and Wales, has opened a new statutory inquiry into The Great Generation (1120349). The inquiry was opened on 3 January 2018.

The charity operates in Brazil, India, Jordan, Sri Lanka and Uganda and works with individuals, schools and businesses to help achieve the millennium development goals, specifically poverty alleviation.

On 17 February 2017 the charity was included in a class inquiry which the Commission opened to examine charities that had repeatedly defaulted on their accounting obligations.

The charity submitted the outstanding documents to the Commission in April 2017 and, as a result, ceased to be a part of the class inquiry. However, despite receiving regulatory advice and being reminded to meet their legal duties, the trustees again failed to file the statutory accounting information on time for the financial year ending 31 December 2016.

As a result of the further failure of the trustees to fulfil their legal reporting obligations the Commission has now opened a new inquiry.

In addition to obtaining the overdue accounting information the inquiry will seek to ensure that the trustees comply with their legal duties to file future account submissions within the statutory deadlines and examine broader aspects of the charity’s administration and management to ensure it is being properly managed by the trustees.

The Commission is reminding charity trustees that if their charity’s gross income exceeds £25,000, they have a legal obligation to submit a copy of their annual report and accounts to the Commission within 10 months of the charity’s financial year end. Failure to do this is a criminal offence under section 173(1) of the Charities Act 2011.

It is the Commission’s policy, after it has concluded an inquiry, to publish a report detailing what issues the inquiry looked at, what actions were undertaken as part of the inquiry and what the outcomes were. Reports of previous inquiries by the Commission are available on GOV.UK.

The charity’s details can be viewed on the Commission’s online charity search tool.

Ends

Notes to editors

1. The Charity Commission is the independent regulator of charities in England and Wales. To find out more about our work, see the about us page on GOV.UK.
2. Search for charities on our check charity tool.
3. Section 46 of the Charities Act 2011 gives the commission the power to institute inquiries. The opening of an inquiry gives the commission access to a range of investigative, protective and remedial legal powers.

DCMS Secretary of State Matt Hancock announced the move as part of the Culture is Digital report, which sets out an ambitious framework for how culture and technology can work together to increase participation and boost the capability of cultural organisations.

It is the first time that the Government has looked at how the two sectors can work together to unleash the creative potential of technology and help bring every cultural organisation – both big and small – into the digital age.

The report makes a number of commitments, including:

• Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund will invest more than £2 million to build the digital capacity of their sectors
• The National Gallery will create an Innovation Lab to examine how museums and cultural organisations can use immersive media, such as virtual and augmented reality, to enhance visitors’ experiences
• The Royal Opera House will create an Audience Lab, which will work with diverse talent to create content using emerging technologies and develop cross-sector collaborations

Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, said:

Our cultural output has always been our unique calling card to the rest of the world and when combined with the latest digital developments there is no limit to our creativity.

We want the UK to be the best place in the world to trial pioneering technology, while also maintaining our world leading status as a centre of artistic and cultural excellence.

Our Culture Is Digital report sets out how culture and technology can collaborate, learn from one another and keep innovating. By embracing new technologies and attracting more diverse audiences, we will continue to cement our status as a creative powerhouse in the digital age.

The Culture is Digital report showcases innovative projects in the creative sector, highlighting the extraordinary collaborations between our world-leading cultural and digital pioneers.

It was launched at the National Gallery showcasing some of the finest recent examples of digital culture, including cutting-edge immersive installations using the latest technology.

The #CultureisDigital project was informed by an online open conversation last year
and was borne out of the Government’s Culture White Paper commitment to review the digitisation of our public collections and enhance the online cultural experience.

It also builds upon the Government’s UK Digital Strategy commitment to increase digital skills, digital participation and unlock the power of data.

Dr Gabriele Finaldi, National Gallery Director, said:

The National Gallery is committed to an ambitious five-year programme of digital change. This goes from evolving our approach to ticketing through the use of big data, to launching new mobile services, to embedding innovation in immersive media in the Gallery through our forthcoming Lab. We are excited by today’s launch of the Culture is Digital report. The commitment it marks from DCMS, the Arts Council and cultural organisations across the country to digital transformation heralds an exciting new period for us all.

Royal Opera House Chief Executive Alex Beard said:

When culture and technology come together, great things can happen. The Royal Opera House is exploring immersive technology to open up a suite of new experiences, sharing the extraordinary qualities of ballet and opera with audiences old and new in our digital age. This report acts as a useful framework for all in our sectors to explore this territory.

Arts Council England will also create and pilot the use of a Digital Maturity Index for the cultural sector, to help organisations improve their digital capability.

ACE will also work with the Heritage Lottery Fund to form a Digital Culture Code – a set of guidelines and principles which cultural organisations will be encouraged to sign up to help increase their digital skills.

Arts Council England Chief Executive Darren Henley said:

Every day across England, artists, performers, museums, libraries and arts organisations create brilliant new content. We want to make sure they have the skills to use the best technology to enable more people in more places to connect directly to this deep well of creativity.

Heritage Lottery Fund Chief Executive Ros Kerslake said:

We welcome this timely report from DCMS. As we have set out in our current consultation on future funding, HLF is committed to supporting digital capacity in the heritage sector, building on the considerable progress that has already been made. We look forward to working with Arts Council England and other partners in making our collective aspirations for digital culture a reality.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

Showcases at the event included:

• Factory 42 – Hold the World with David Attenborough: In Hold the World, Sir David and the Natural History Museum are brought together using a combination of interactive video game technology and TV documentary. Sir David will be transformed into a hologram and will guide participants to virtually handle fossils, using his passion for the natural world to bring objects to life.
• Science Museum/Alchemy VR: Space Descent VR, a unique and immersive virtual reality experience commissioned by Alchemy VR for the Science Museum Group in which astronaut Tim Peake guides you through a thrilling, high-speed journey to Earth in the Soyuz TMA-19M.
  BBC/Civilisations: As part of the Culture UK initiative, BBC R&D has collaborated with BBC Arts to offer the museum sector, galleries and libraries a number of exciting opportunities to be involved in the news series ‘Civilisations’ on BBC 2.
• The Welsh National Opera/REWIND: Magic Butterfly – the combined experience of The Magic Flute and Madam Butterfly in VR – was a collaboration between the WNO and immersive content studio REWIND. The interactive immersive virtual reality experience combines motion capture, animation, music and technology.
• Smartify: A virtual art guide enabling audiences to scan and identify artwork in museums and receive rich information via text, audio and video using augmented reality.
• You can follow #CultureIsDigital on social media and explore our interactive 360 degree presentation that allows users to learn about case studies and other key aspects of the report.