The Co-operative Councils’ Innovation Network (CCIN) elected Jim Robbins as its new chair last month. Robbins has been a Labour/Co-op member on Swindon Council since 2012. We caught up with him at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, to find out more about Swindon’s community wealth building initiatives and his main expectations from the new government.
How did you become involved in your local council?
I became a councillor back in 2012. I was really interested in trying to help my local community, and be more involved, and I felt that Swindon had loads of potential. I really wanted to get involved to help drive it forward.
Swindon Council joined CCIN this year. How did you learn about it and why did you choose to join it?
We found out about the network when we came to the Local Government Association (LGA) conference, we had a conversation with a team, and it just felt like a really good fit for us, a really positive network of people working hard using co-operative methods to deliver change in their local communities. It just seemed a no-brainer for us to want to get involved, and we’ve really, really valued the membership ever since.
In recent years cuts to local government funding have led to councils cutting down on some services. How has your council coped with this?
Unfortunately, we’ve had to cut services. It’s meant that we haven’t been able to invest as much as we would like. It’s been really tricky trying to balance the books, as well as dealing with increased demand for our children’s services and our adult social care services. So it’s that constant battle between trying to provide the best possible services to residents, but also making sure that we can balance the books. And it’s getting increasingly hard year-on-year. It’s just difficult for us to be able to do all of the things that we know that residents want us to do
Could some of these services be provided by co-ops and mutuals?
It’s something that we’re really looking into, and we’re working hard trying to use the network to find those really successful models from other places, so that we can learn from the positive work going on and be able to really deliver for our residents in Swindon. So yeah, we’re really looking at those co-operative solutions to help us through our problems.
What is the main takeaway for you from this year’s Labour conference?
I think it’s a real focus from everyone here that we need to fix the foundations. The country does feel like lots of our public services are broken. There hasn’t been the investment in schools, hospitals, prisons, as well as local councils. So it feels like there’s a huge amount for us to do as a party to rebuild the country and bring back that confidence and hope to people. I think the nice thing has been there’s a real determination from everyone that I’ve spoken to to get involved, find those solutions and work to implement them.
How do you see your council’s role as an anchor institution for the local community?
It’s a massive part of what we want to do. So we’re really keen to use our influence as an anchor organisation in the town and work really positively with other anchor institutions, such as the colleges, and the hospital, to really show the value that co-operative solutions can bring. We’re really passionate about community wealth building and how we can try and keep money in the local economy, and improve services for local people, and clearly, co-operatives have got a huge part to play in those solutions. So [we are] really excited about the opportunities that are open to us.
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Have you got any examples to share with our readers?
We’re at the very early days of our community wealth-building journey, but getting a really positive response from the local hospital who understand the value that they can bring as an anchor institution and really trying to work through those opportunities that co-operative solutions could bring.
One of the issues brought up regularly by co-ops and mutuals is the importance of public procurement. What is your council’s approach to this?
I’m certainly really interested in looking at how we can use the changes in procurement rules that are coming in next year [through the Procurement Act] and really maximise our social value within our commissioning and procurement processes. So we’ve gone through a process. We’ve got a new director of procurement in, and part of the work that we’re doing is getting her to be engaged with the network, understand how the social value message is working in other councils, and how we can work together with the Co-operative Councils’ Innovation Network (CCIN) to get the best possible commissioning that works in terms of value for money, quality of service, and really delivering the missions that we’ve got to drive in that social value for residents.
What is your main expectation from this new government?
I think it’s to try to bring back some of that hope, to bring back the sustainable growth that is going to allow the economy to grow, to deliver the services that we want to see. I think there’s a real determination and a real understanding of the problems, and now it’s being able to drive forward the solutions. I’m really, really encouraged by what I’ve heard at the conference here, and it feels like another great positive for this government is just how many people from the co-operative family are involved as co-operators, as ministers, lots of the new MPs are Co-operative Party members. And it feels like it’s a real opportunity for us to work together as a sector, with the support of government in a way that we just haven’t had before.
