One year into her role as Groceries Code Adjudicator, Christine Tacon has given an update report on progress so far – and revealed the results of her supplier survey on retailer behaviour.

The YouGov survey of more than 500 suppliers and trade associations was published yesterday at the Groceries Code Adjudicator conference in London, and revealed that a surprising number of suppliers have little knowledge of GSCOP – despite all the column inches dedicated to it in the trade press and how busy Tacon has been over the past year raising awareness of the code and her role.

The results found that 13% of direct suppliers said they were unaware of the code and another 21% said they knew it existed, but knew nothing more.

Given that Tacon’s ability to do her job effectively relies on people coming forward to raise concerns about potential breaches of the code, this degree of ignorance is clearly too high.

She is keen to improve the situation and told delegates at yesterday’s conference that she wants to see levels of awareness rise above 90%. She said there was also a lot of work to do to build confidence. Even though she has a legal duty to protect the anonymity of suppliers, the survey suggested fear of retribution was the main reason why some were reticent about coming forward.

But there was a sense that Tacon has made progress. More respondents thought the relationship between retailers and suppliers had improved in recent years than thought it had deteriorated and that was a view echoed by a number of the suppliers I spoke to yesterday. As outlined at the event by the code compliance officers at Tesco and Morrisons, the retailers have stepped up efforts to train buying teams on the code. Tesco has even introduced an element of competition, setting teams against each other to finish training first.

Tacon has also secured an important victory in persuading eight of the 10 retailers covered by the code to restrict forensic audits to the current and last two financial years (it remains to be seen why Waitrose and Sainsbury’s have not agreed to this). It had been known for retailers to look back as far as six years to find evidence of overpayment and then bill suppliers six-figure sums, so this agreement is a big step forward.

Overall, there is a feeling that the appointment of the adjudicator has made a difference. The industry is now taking notice of the code and other countries are looking on with interest. The delegate list yesterday included large numbers from countries such as The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and Australia. It won’t be surprising to see others adopt the UK approach in the coming years.

You can read our exclusive interview with Christine Tacon, available to subscribers only, here.

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