Can you turn around neighbourhoods and foster sustainable renewal? Drawing on work I have been involved in over time, with hopeful examples and practical health warnings, this deck explores the role of co-operatives and community economic development.

1. The Role of Co-operatives in Local Economic Renewal

2. What is local
economic
renewal?
2

3. Local economic renewal typically rests on
effective community development
• Community development
• Co-production
• Localism
• Empowerment
• Community economic
development
• Community organising
• Community building
• Resilient communities
• Community cohesion
• Community safety
• Public health
• Sustainable communities
• Neighbourhood renewal
3
Needs based
Key groups
Professional interventions
Unmet needs audit
Delivery through public
or voluntary sector
service projects
Asset based
Talent survey
Anchor organisations
Asset transfer
Delivery through
community based
intermediaries
Goal oriented
Community organising
Campaigns
Visioning
Delivery through
activists and
entrepreneurs
A report from the Democracy Collaborative on community development initiatives in the United States
found that: “virtually all of the cases profiled in this report stressed the value of embarking on an
achievable task that builds capacity and buy-in within the community”.
Three models of community development

4. It is possible to improve even the toughest neighbourhoods
through community action… but it takes time
Neighbourhood Inspector Neil Armsworth, of
the Northumbria Police says “the changes to
the Meadow Well estate as well as the role
and work of the police has been simply
transformational over the past 25 years.”
Nancy Peters, who started the local credit union that was instrumental to change, said at the time
“at one time, you could leave the door open, people wouldn’t venture in and steal but now whether
your door’s open or shut, they need the money to survive and its the same with children. The
shoplifting, the aggression, the anger. I have never seen anything like it.”
Starting with a talent survey of random houses in 1991, residents came together to respond, with
the idea of ‘a new heart for Meadow Well’ in the form of a development centre built on a discredited
youth centre. The response, though, was inertia. Despite the efforts of one sympathetic local
employee from the Council, a senior officer was heard to say “those fuckers couldn’t plan a pram
shed.” A decision was taken, instead, simply to close the youth centre.
As this dragged on over five hot Summer months, the residents started to drop out and then… a
group of young people locally burned down the youth centre. What followed was two days and
nights of riots, with fires, a burned out corner shop, pot shots at a police helicopter cruising above.
The riots forced everyone to think again. The working party held estate-wide elections to form a
group that could negotiate with outsiders. They used Tony Gibson’s Planning for Real approach,
which creates a mock-up of the neighbourhood, from trash on the ground to buildings up high, on a
table that people can then walk around, explore and together discuss options for improvement. This
led to the development of a new community building, launched with a fun day.
The first of many community-led improvements, it was the first building scheme in the borough that
had taken shape from day one to completion without a single case of vandalism or theft.
Twenty five years ago the Meadow Well estate on Tyneside was hit by riots. Since that time, supported by the late
Tony Gibson, a pioneer of the approach, it has become an exemplar for community development.
4
2017 1991
“There are a hundred and one starting
points for local community action, but all
have one thing in common. It is the day
you or a neighbour step over a broken
pavement or rubbish dumped in a corner
and say, not ‘someone’ should do
something, but ‘we’ should do something.
Many more steps will have to follow.
Communities are full of unused energy,
talent, skills and knowledge. Once this is
unlocked, great changes can take place.”
Tony Gibson, Stephen Thake & Ed Mayo,
Taking Power 1999

5. Key principles
• There is money around, but not nearly enough
institutions to invest locally and those which do exist
are often too risk averse for growing local markets.
• There are assets in communities – knowledge, skills
resources, land and buildings – that can be
harnessed to support local economic development.
• There is money flowing through all local economies
but, when there are few local enterprises and supply
chains, it tends to flow straight out again.
• There is a sense of place, where all the economic
levers belong, the economic glue which links
together those taking part in local sharing and
trading.
• A local approach may have benefits in other policy
areas: it can produce jobs, but it also addresses
environmental and social issues both locally and
beyond.
The particular leadership role of
community co-ops is the catalytic
role they can play for community
economic development
Seventy
communities have
worked with Co-
ops UK and
partners as part of
the Community
Rights programme
backed by
Government
5
Source: Ultra-micro economics:
small plus small plus small equals
big, David Boyle for Co-operatives
UK 2014

6. Empowering Places
“Capacity building support is the process
of developing and strengthening the
knowledge, skills, abilities and resources
of your organisation and your wider
community, to help you meet your overall
aims.”
Community economic
development can be
accelerated through
capacity building and
enterprise support
6

7. THE HIVE: PROMOTING THE CO-OPERATIVE
WAY OF DOING BUSINESS
The Hive is providing support to:
start-up co-ops and community businesses
existing co-ops looking to grow and develop
Businesses looking to convert to co-operative or
community ownership
www.thehive.coop
 As of end October 2017, 435 groups have benefited from support
worth over £200,000
 We are on target to benefit over 800 groups by the end of 2018

8. • Glenwyvis Distillery is bringing whisky production back to the town of Dingwall, Scotland almost a century
after the last distillery closed down, in turn helping to regenerate a town which the economy had left behind.
• 3,000 people came together to invest £2.6 million in a co-op, a great example of raising ‘community
shares’, which will become the world’s first community-owned distillery, using local barley and renewable
energy and attracting tourists to the area.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfdoKZco27E&feature=youtu.be
In the Scottish Highlands,
a co-op is helping to bring
hope to a town left behind
by the national economy
“Thee, Ferintosh! O sadly lost! Scotland lament frae coast to coast!”
Rabbie Burns on a distillery closure

9. 9
The Evergreen Initiative in Cleveland, USA was launched in 2007, inspired by the
successful Mondragon Co-operative Corporation in Spain. In an adapted design
for Cleveland, low-cost capital has been seeded by grant capital from the
Cleveland Development Foundation and supported by different forms of tax
credits as well as long-term, low-interest loans from the federal government. They
have raised £200 million of low-cost capital for Evergreen Co-operative
Development Fund, their CDFI, and the annual procurement power of their
anchor institutions is $3 billion.
Evergreen Co-operatives have so far set up three worker co-operatives:
Evergreen Co-operative Laundry Services that has been supported by
procurement from anchor institution hospitals and universities; Evergreen Energy
Solutions that has been set up both for installing, owning and maintaining solar
power on anchor institutional buildings and for repairing and insulating older
housing stock citywide; and Green City Growers a food growing co-operative to
create jobs through the largest inner city farm in the USA.
It has not been a straightforward process, but the insight of Evergreen Co-
operatives has been to link up three co-operative economic development tools.
1. the Worker Co-op model to create good jobs including equity development for
worker owners and profit sharing,
2. a Community Development Finance Institution owned by the Evergreen co-op
network to invest and recycle low-cost capital (as subordinated debt at a rate
of 1% to create jobs) and
3. a Community Land Trust to develop the space and sites for food growing and
for developing affordable housing over time.
In Cleveland USA, co-ops are helping to bring hope to
a city

10. Health warnings, or... how to make community
development harder
• Community development takes time, but it is rarely given time.
Instead there is a succession of stop-start initiatives, new funding
fashions and sudden death grants.
• Community development takes resources, but it is rarely given the
resources genuinely to make a difference. Stripped down forms of
community organising, for example, deliver stripped down results.
• Local economic renewal requires an investment in local capability,
but funders and agencies have typically failed to invest in effective
capacity building.
• The hollowing out of local authorities and cuts to core services
means that success may be no more than standing still
• Localism is not always the answer to issues that are national in
orientation, such as advocacy or challenges around social norms,
such as around race and gender.
10

11. 1. In West Dorset, rural communities have created local food links and new food enterprises.
2. In the Hebrides, three quarters of land is community owned, with more renewable energy generated in
South Uist now in Summer months than the national grid can handle
3. In Preston, the local authority, police and health services are seeing where they can place contracts with
locally owned businesses – a ‘community wealth building’ approach
4. In Bristol, growing numbers of people have joined the local credit union, for local savings and a currency
that can be cashed with local enterprise.
5. In the Black Country, a loan fund supports local businesses turned down by high street banks to survive
and thrive.
6. Children in the seaside town of Rhyl get to play music after teachers laid off by the county council
formed their own co-operative to keep music education alive.
So, there are genuine community economic
development success stories…
… but the caution is that these are unsung heroes.
People’s sense of their neighbourhood is slow to change,
however inspired that change may be.
”Rather than complaining about things, we’re getting on and doing something”
Carolyn Loftus, member Esk Energy Society, Yorkshire
11

12. Resources
https://mycommunity.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Introduction-to-CED.pdf
https://www.uk.coop/ced/
https://www.powertochange.org.uk/funding/empowering-places/
Acknowledgements and Inspiration
Many thanks to our local and national partners around community economic development, including Co-operative Bank, Locality, NEF,
CLES, Responsible Finance, CLG, Power to Change, Reconomy & Transition Towns Network, New Weather Institute, Co-operative
Councils Innovation Network, Co-operative Development Scotland, Wales Co-operative Centre.