ICELAND is now the UK’s biggest recruiter of former offenders and is ramping up plans to help other major companies employ prison leavers.
In the last 2½ years, the frozen foods retailer has conducted 1,100 interviews at 98 prisons and offered 1,000 jobs to men and women before they were released.
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The company has more than 300 ex-offenders working in its supermarkets and warehouses, while 50 more will join when they are free.
Iceland has approached other businesses to turn its existing initiative into a charity called the Second Chance Partnership, which will recruit lags on their behalf.
Logistics firm GXO is already signed up alongside a handful of other big national retailers.
Government figures show that if someone has a job to go to once they leave the prison, it reduces reoffending by 50 per cent — helping to tackle the £18billion-a-year cost to the economy.
Iceland boss Richard Walker said: “Ex-offenders are also good for business — they typically have much lower rates of sickness, absenteeism, are loyal and grafters, they are great employees.
“So many people are in prison on reoffences, it’s not their first time inside.
“If you can break that cycle, it is a major solution to the prisons crisis.
“We have the biggest prison population in Europe, the current system of building more jails and locking more people up for short offences isn’t working.”
In 2022, Iceland hired Paul Cowley — author of Thief, Prisoner, Soldier, Priest — as its director of rehabilitation.
His book details his life journey as “a young idiot” who spent a year behind bars for petty theft, then 17 years with the Army before becoming a parish priest and meeting Malcolm Walker, the founder of Iceland, 12 years ago.
Richard said: “What we do that’s different is we give offenders a job offer letter before they are released.
“It’s so important for their hope and mental health.
“Having that job offer is so powerful that we’ve seen people stick it on their cell walls.
“It gives hope that they can rebuild their lives.”
Iceland also guarantees them a job in the store that is closest to their families and support network.
But the company does not hire those who have convictions for an assault on a minor, sex offences, terrorism, life sentence offences, rioters, assaults on retail workers or if they are on medication for drug or alcohol dependency.
The Government — spearheaded by Prisons minister Lord James Timpson — launched an initiative in January to try to get more offenders back into stable work.
Others taking part include Timpsons, Greggs, Co-op, Oliver Bonas, TalkTalk and Lotus Cars.
GROCERY LOANS AID
by Richard Walker, Executive Chairman of Iceland
THE cost of living crisis has fallen out of the headlines, but pressure on households is far from over.
We have worrying figures that food inflation is already shooting back up.
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From talks with our suppliers, I know these challenges will remain for some time.
We launched our Iceland Food Club three years ago after carefully investigating how we could best help households choosing from heating or eating.
We were even losing customers to food banks, so we needed action.
Our Food Club offers interest-free micro loans of £25 to £75 on a pre-loaded Mastercard to spend on Iceland groceries.
We launch it at pinch points, such as Christmas and other school holidays, when families have extra mouths to feed.
The scheme has already helped 30,000 people, so we’re reopening our Iceland Food Club micro loan scheme in time for the Easter holidays.
Access to fair credit should be a right.
Iceland is helping out, but it’s time for businesses, government and financial institutions to do more.
GROCEROO WIN
HE boss of Deliveroo has insisted he is “not going anywhere” as there were plenty of opportunities for its grocery business to be as big as takeaway deliveries.
Will Shu, who founded the firm 12 years ago, said one-sixth of its income came from retail and grocery shopping but it could be more than half of the business.
Binbags, painkillers and baby wipes are the most popular non-food items and helped turn its first profit of £2.9million, compared to a £31.8million loss, last year.
3RD YEAR BONUS KO FOR STAFF
STAFF at John Lewis have been denied their cherished annual bonus for the third year in a row despite profits at the retail group climbing by almost three-quarters.
Pre-tax profits have jumped from £56million to £97million, it was revealed yesterday.
Its Waitrose arm helped drive overall sales up by 3 per cent to £12.8billion, while sales were flat at John Lewis.
Jason Tarry, who took over as chairman of the John Lewis Partnership in September, said there was “considerable catch-up investment needed in stores and our supply chain”.
He also revealed the Budget’s national insurance contribution changes would cost it another £40million.
Mr Tarry said the business was investing £114million increasing pay in line with the living wage.
He said: “We have prioritised this over sharing a bonus this year.”
AS a global tariff war looms, the Office for National Statistics yesterday confessed it would have to delay its official trade stats — due out today — owing to a number of errors.
The ONS is already under pressure about the quality of its jobs data.
MAKING TRACKS
HORNBY, the model railway brand beloved by rocker Sir Rod Stewart, is quitting London’s junior stock exchange.
It reasoned it should delist from AIM as it could not justify the regulatory burden and the £400,000 associated costs.
Less than 10 per cent of the firm is in public hands as Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group and investment firm Phoenix own a combined 91 per cent.
Just 0.03 per cent of Hornby’s shares are traded daily.
SOFAS SO GOOD
FURNITURE giant DFS is sitting pretty after unexpectedly boosting profit forecasts by a fifth and betting it might benefit from a US-China trade war.
It posted a doubling in half-year profits to £17million and recent strong sales of La-z-boy recliners means it now expects to report up to £29million in annual profit.
Boss Tim Stacey also thinks Chinese factories may want to offload cheaper stock to the UK to beat US tariffs.
He said: “It means that we can get good cost benefits.”
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