Central England Co-op offers face visors to staff who want them

• The society has already brought in social distancing measures and provided staff with gloves and hand sanitiser

• It comes as other retailers including Aldi, Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury’s begin to make masks available to staff

Central England Co-op is offering face visors for staff in its food business, in addition to previous measures to protect colleagues during the coronavirus crisis.

The retailer currently operates 260 food stores and petrol stations across 16 counties. It said wearing the visors was not compulsory and insisted the decision was down to individuals.

The society has already brought in social distancing measures and provided staff with gloves and hand sanitiser. It has also installed 1,000 checkout screens and employed 150 security guards to manage queues.

“Nothing is more important to us all at Central England Co-operative than the safety of our colleagues and customers,” said Central England Co-op CEO Debbie Robinson.

“We’re closely following government advice in our approach to social distancing and have rolled out a range of new measures for our stores that now includes face visors for colleagues if they want to wear one.

“We continue to ask all of our customers to co-operate with these measures to keep us all safe and allow us to continue to serve our communities.”

Central England employs more than 6,200 colleagues across the food business and recently hired an extra 1,000 to cope with increased demand.