The Co-operative Councils Innovation Network (CCIN) met for its annual conference last weekend, in the impressive setting of the Woolwich Arsenal – a location steeped in co-operative as well as naval history. Also offering a backdrop, matched by a chill wind blowing in off the Thames, were troubling headlines from around the world – giving delegates much to think about as they looked for alternative ways to deliver a better future.
Hammering home this point, Rose Marley, CEO of Co-operatives UK, told delegates to step up to support co-op values. “We need heroes because there are plenty of villains in leadership roles around the world,” she said, pointing to opportunities in the form of the International Year of Cooperatives and the Labour government’s commitment to doubling the co-operative economy.
Earlier, as he welcomed delegates to the conference, Greenwich council leader Anthony Okereke drew parallels between the current global malaise and the early days of the co-op movement. “Co-operation was a response to crisis, poverty, lack of representation, rapid change,” he said. “It was about taking the power away from the powerful and giving it back to working people.”
Co-op commission
Hoping to repeat that trick, Okereke hailed the findings of his council’s co-operative commission, and announced a £1.1m community energy fund to fund projects at ground level to generate clean power and help towards net zero targets.
Related: Greenwich Council launches commission to develop local co-op sector
Other outcomes from the commission include a new co-operative for schools – a learning partnership to discuss future of education.
“These are bold policies that can be implemented across the country,” he said.
The commission had local co-op successes to draw on, notably event sponsor Greenwich Leisure Ltd (GLL), whose CEO Peter Bundey told delegates that “co-operative placemaking works and we should shout more about it”.
Formed in 1993 to offer local services, GLL had to overcome “naysayers and resistance to change”, said Bundey, but has been “transformational” in terms of offering more to local people. Local authority support was crucial to this, he said, urging delegates to push for a supportive environment for co-ops in their authorities. “Your network is about getting things done,” he told them.
Joe Fortune, secretary general of the Co-op Party, also welcomed the findings of the Greenwich Cooperative Commission. “For too long we as a group have been too backwards in coming forwards,” he said. “I believe we haven’t had that drive, that want for change that other groups have achieved. We know the model works, now the challenge is what we do with that knowledge … I think that is what this report talks to.”
The commission’s findings were then discussed by a panel, featuring Nick Plumb, director of policy and insight at Power to Change; Emma Back, founder of Equal Care Co-op, and Giovanna Speciale, CEO of South East London Community Energy (Selce).
Plumb reiterated the need for a more supportive environment at council level. “Co-ops are falling through the cracks,” he warned: they are faced with a lack of understanding of the model in local authorities, and the complications of dealing with multiple council departments. For councillors and officers who do want to push co-operation, he advised them to “build on what’s there” by finding co-ops that exist and identifying areas of support. “Where there’s a catalyst in your place, how do you support them, how do you help them?”
New measures supporting the community right to buy from the Labour government will help, he said, because “asset ownership is a real way of building sustainability”, but councils should also work with community stakeholders and anchor organisations.
Co-op training, capacity building and business support are also key, he added.
Speciale said Selce’s success shows what such a policy environment can achieve; the co-op started with no funding or support, but the local co-op development agency stepped in and introduced it to key people on the local authority.
The has allowed Selce, now a leading light of the community energy sector, to offer skilled services, she said – with energy advisors supporting vulnerable families, and solar installation experts knowing what to fit and where.
But funding to develop such an organisation is not a six-month deal, she warned. “It’s two or three years to develop a sustainable business.”
Related: Community energy sector meets to discuss the carbon transition
Meanwhile, West Yorkshire’s Equal Care – regularly hailed by the co-op movement as a success story in offering care services that are fairer for users and workers – benefited from support from the co-op movement – notably the Platform Cooperativism Consortium and Co-operatives UK. But, said Emma Back, it also had funds from the local council to host the sessions it needed to sign people up. “Even a small grant from a council is really powerful,” she said.
“What’s missing,” she told delegates, “is what gets you from the next stage, to the next stage, to the next stage – to where you have a series of robust co-ops operating across the borough rather than a set of faltering startups.” This should be remedied with a joined-up strategy on co-op development, she thinks, with grants allocated in such a way as to create a co-op ecosystem.
And she urged councils in the CCIN network to take the Equal Care model seriously as a way to take meaningful advantage of devolution, and offer co-operative social care instead of letting outsourcers – often owned by foreign equity companies – extract capital from their communities.
Related: Social care for the people it’s supposed to serve
“The question is where does power lie, how does power work,” she said. “I would love to see a council, just one, give it a go, to look closely at what we’ve developed at Equal Care over the past six years. Our model of social care is better.”
Speciale agreed. “Co-ops are all about power,” she said. “People feel like a victim when it comes to the energy sector … We want to change that dynamic by making people the owners of that energy and in a position to make decisions about it.”
Development toolkit
Another important piece of work for the co-op movement was unveiled at the conference – the CCIN’s Councils’ Co-operative Development Toolkit, which contains resources to help councils strengthen their strategy for co-operative development.
The toolkit was presented by Jonathan Nunn, policy and partnerships lead on Kirklees Council, which led development with match-funding from Power to Change and support from other councils and co-op support bodies.
He said people looking to build a case for co-ops with a local authority should go back to basics, addressing questions of what the benefits of co-ops are, what a support structure should look like, and what a council can do.
It is important to match co-ops to local needs, he said, and then take action – “find stakeholders, develop theory of change, find funding and develop an action plan”.
The evidence base for co-ops in the UK is not strong, said Nunn, so co-op advocates need to work harder to make a business case; they need to identify local objectives, commission studies, and run co-op commissions like the one in Greenwich. And once a co-op project is running, it is crucial to measure impact to ensure repeat funding,
Useful steps include mapping the local co-op economy, using the Co-operatives UK directory; talking to other councils with a strong co-op presence; and identifying areas of a council’s strategy where co-ops can help – “any high-level partnership strategy, economic or community wealth strategy, joint strategic needs assessment, health and wellbeing plan, or strategy on environment, transport or housing.”
After mapping co-ops onto local strategies, the next step is to cultivate allies – stakeholders, sympathetic councillors, Co-op Party members, or existing co-ops that can offer advice and support.
Inclusive growth, from social care to housing
Following on from this, a conference plenary looked at ways to embed co-ops into a council in an effective way that ensures inclusive growth. The session used case studies from children’s social care, looking at co-operative models in fostering and residential care.
Sharon Cooper, interim director of children’s services on Warrington Council, talked about a collaboration between eight local authorities to pool resources and offer a co-operative alternative to independent fostering agencies. Initiatives include a marketing drive to recruit foster parents and support hubs for care leavers. “If we get control we can offer a better service,” she said.
Chris Loftus, operations director of Social Adventures, a public health clinic in Salford, said: “We think the co-operative model bakes accountability into the service. The management team can be voted out – which is something not there in most organisations.”
The not-for-profit model, he added, works in contrast to the private sector, “with very high profit margins, obscure structures with offshore elements, taking money out of the system.”
Social care is not the only crisis facing the UK: housing is a critical issue and the conference finished with a look at planning reform.
The panel included David Hopkins, director of Coin Street Community Builders, launched in 1984. With the support of Ken Livingstone’s GLC, it created a co-op community with housing units, shops and a community centre in North Southwark and Waterloo.
Coin Street began as a response to unwelcome local development, said Hopkins: but it was not enough to just oppose the bulldozers; residents brought forward a coalition of people young and old, backed by architects and other professionals, to propose an alternative.
Related: Housing co-ops look for growth in a time of crisis at CCH conference
Unfortunately, the model is hard to replicate, with issues around grant availability and access to loan funding, he warned. “We hit point where we couldn’t afford to build social housing.”
Cllr Jackie Hollywell, cabinet member for housing on Stevenage Council, said her authority was working to reverse a decline in social housing stock – which has fallen from 30,000 council houses to 8,000.
In recent years, the council has built 608 homes and another 405 have been given planning permission. But local support and consultation are crucial in this process ,she said. “There’s a lack of trust in politicians – it’s incumbent on politicians to build that trust. Building the right homes is a good way to do that.”
Jamie Carswell, director of housing on Greenwich Council, warned that the landscape for social housing is changing fast, with post-Grenfell regulations imposing bureaucracy on providers. Although the red tape is needed to keep people safe, “it’s a big challenge”, he said.
The market is also changing in terms of sources of subsidy, and partners available, he said, “which means you can have different types of tenure, need to coordinate the management of these shared spaces. The way housing co-ops fit into that may have to change.”
He added:”The housing market is so broken, community use in a co-operative venture needs to demonstrate an additionality. If it’s a very large site, where you need to do something quickly, co-ops will always struggle. But if it’s a small site where no one will build, the additionality will take effect.”
