Central England Co-op is installing permanent hand sanitiser stations at the front of all stores as part of a new wave of measures to keep staff and customers safe during the coronavirus outbreak.

Social distance central England co-op

Other new measures include the reformatting of stores to accommodate a permanent one-way shopper flow system, communicated to customers via signage.

Debbie Robinson, Central England Co-op chief executive, said: “Nothing is more important to us all at Central England Cooperative than the safety of our colleagues and customers.

“We’re closely following Government advice in our approach to social distancing and have now rolled out a range of new measures for our stores to sit alongside what we already have in place.

“We now 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.”

The society already has a range of protective measures in place, including plastic screens at till points, markings to encourage social distancing in store and a cleaning regime for countertops and chip and pin machines, ATMs, baskets and trolleys.