Will 2014 be the Year of the Co-operative Pub?

Last year saw an important moment for Plunkett and all those who support community co-operatives. It was the year that more communities asked about saving their pub than saving their village shop. Shops continued to show growth, but this overtaking in demand speaks volumes.

It raises the prospect that 2014 could see more Co-operative Pubs opening than Community-owned shops. This isn’t certain. Pubs are harder to save than shops and more attempts fall by the wayside. But we will be doing everything in our power at Plunkett  to make it as easy as possible for communities to recognise the role that a pub plays in the vitality of their community and to secure its long term future.

Even more important is the message it sends that community co-operatives are becoming more diverse. Shops are the most common form, but with pub numbers on the rise, alongside cafes and other models, it show that the sector is maturing. To us, the future is one which doesn’t push one solution, be it shops or pubs, but one in which each community can ask “What matters to us round here?” and to then be able to use community ownership to find a co-operative way to secure its future.

Our highest honour ever

Dame Pauline Green, President of the International Co-operative Alliance, offers her congratulations on the award, together with South Africa's Deputy Minister of the Department of Trade and Industry, Ms Elizabeth Thabethe.

I’m not often left speechless, but I was when I was informed that the Plunkett Foundation had been awarded the Rochdale Pioneers Award by the International Co-operative Alliance. It is simply the most prestigious award that the Co-operative Movement gives and had never before been given to an organization (the 13 previous laureates had all been outstanding individuals).

Collecting the award in Cape Town , in front of well over 1,000 people from 100 countries, was certainly a humbling task. This was added to by a congratulations message from the Prime Minister being shown on giant screens. 

I said that the award was for three groups of people. Firstly, the amazing group of people that work for Plunkett now or serve on its Board. Secondly, the generations that had gone before us to make us what we are, outstanding co-operators such as Margaret Digby and Edgar Parnell. And finally, it was a recognition of Sir Horace Plunkett and his circle that created the Foundation.

As someone that helped to create the International Co-operative Alliance, Sir Horace would have been deeply moved to receive the award. He once said of the Foundation "If I can look back from the other world, I am sure I shall see what will greatly please me.” I’m sure that he was smiling that night in Cape Town.

Mary Portas tells Plunkett three things every community-owned shop should know

I had the pleasure of attending Co-operatives UK's Audience with Mary Portas. I asked her for one piece of advice that she'd give to a community learning to become retailers by owning their own village shop. In true retailer style, she gave me three for the price of one.

Service
Create a totally personal service for your customers. We all want to shop with people who connect with us. So be someone who knows their customers.

Specialise
Be someone who knows what they are selling. There are too many faceless retailers.

Shopping experience
Too often the small try to copy the big. Be something that reflects who you are.

The Big Society and the Life of Brian

It was a great pleasure to be part of a lunchtime seminar for Defra civil servants on understanding social enterprise in a Big Society world run by Defra's Social Enterprise Strategic Partnership. My colleagues dealt with explaining about Social Enterprise and then left me to explain the Big Society connection.


I said that I approached this with some caution as most presentations I heard from organisations to Government on the Big Society reminded me of the crucifixion scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian. Namely, that wonderful moment when Brian doesn't hear the Centurion ask who is Brian as he has been given a pardon. So when the Centurion asks who Brian of Nazareth is, Brian's neighbour replies "I'm Brian." Then the person next to him says that he is Brian and so it goes in, ending with the wonderful claim "I'm Brian and so if my wife."


So I decided not to join the throng of claiming that we were the true Big Society, but set out instead where we did play a role. Rather than trying to reinvent it, I took the three main headings of localism, volunteering  and philanthropy.


The challenge of Localism remains that it means different things to different people. As Steve Wyler of Locality has said, for some it ends at the Town Hall door. We engaged with Big Society when it reached actual communities. Social enterprise generated sustainable enterprises which have the potential to unlock community energy today and to continue to deliver for years to come. Defra needed Localism to be strong at the community level if it was to progress its own objectives.


Promoting volunteering was not easy in a time of austerity, but the time had come to end presenting it as the amateur option. Big Society thinking already challenged the traditional thinking that separated the public sector and enterprise. Social enterprise also was able to combine enterprise with volunteering. For instance, community-owned village shops were highly stable enterprises, but used over one million hours of volunteer time. Supporting such crossovers between volunteering and enterprise was an opportunity for Defra.


Philanthropy was the least attractive of the three words for social enterprise, but still relevant to us. We often challenged grant reliance, but our alternatives tended to be about unlocking resources from a range of places, not just traditional philanthropy. Community shares, equity investments, bonds and social impact bonds were all examples of social enterprises bringing new resources to bear on solving problems. Whilst we had changed, Defra needed to think about how it might support such new funding approaches.


If Big Society was a priority across Government, it was a real opportunity in Defra. Many of its priorities could only be made to work through Big Society approaches. Social enterprise alone was not the Big Society, but a Big Society without it would be a much poorer place.

This is not a shop

One of my fond memories of last year was meeting the chair of a shop that I'd been to the launch of. It was a great shop, much needed, and had been opened against all the odds. He spent several minutes pouring out all the had improved in the village thanks to their work. Then, suddenly and in mid-sentence, he stopped himself as he realised that he hadn't mentioned the shop once. He paused and said "It's not about running a shop, is it?" I replied, "It never was, we just didn't tell you at the time"

That magic moment when community organisers go beyond solving the immediate problem to seeing that this the way to see all your community needs and challenges as being in your own hands to solve happens so often. Sometimes it can take years to come. So I was delighted last Saturday when I visited Trefeglyws in Wales for their official opening. I congratulated them on the shop only to be told "this isn't a shop." They were right at two levels, alongside the shop were a petrol station, cafe, meeting space and more. But at a higher level, they were right too. It was a vision of what their community needed and a vehicle for constantly refreshing that vision in the future. The Cwm Trannon Community Co-operative was a great inspiration that it is possible to start with that level of vision rather than hoping it comes in the future.

Extending our impact

Congratulations to Kirdford Village Stores  in Sussex for winning the Daily Telegraph's 'Best Village Shop in Britain' award. It is always a pleasure to see community-owned shops beating all-comers to take such a title.

By coincidence, I had the pleasure of visiting there a week before. All I can say is that Sue and her team richly deserved the award. There was no doubt that they were doing a great job delivering a fantastic service to their community. But there was something else that struck me there, and in visiting the neighbouring stores. The passion that community-owned stores have for sourcing local food is now at a stage where it isn't just the store they save, but a whole variety of local businesses.

That was visible in Kirdford. It was also clear nearby in Lodsworth. I'd been there when the store opened, restoring a service to a village which had been without a village store for 23 years. This time, it was just the store that was thriving. THREE food businesses had opened up in the village and were supplying the store. In one case, the store was delivering the goods to other local stores. I saw the same thing in Strood Green and Hambledon; communities taking control not only of their store, but of their local food system.

We've been supporting local food in village stores through the Making Local Food Work programme for some time thanks to the BIG Lottery, but it was great to see a real sea change at a local level, not just for the store, but for the local economy.

Back to school to discover co-operation

One of the great joys of being part of the international co-operative movement is that one lifetime is far too short a time to know every form of co-operative action around the world. New experiences come along with a wonderful regularity.


I had a great example of that last week when I visited Sir Thomas Boughey High School & Co-operative Business College near Stoke-on-Trent. It is one of the pioneering Co-operative Trust schools developed thanks to the work of the Co-operative College. I expected to find its structure to be co-operative and exciting; it was. School membership was open to parents, learners, staff and the community. But even more exciting was the learning going on there.


Its view of co-operation was drawn from around the world. It captured the richness of co-operative action from all parts of the globe, not just a traditional UK perspective. It was rooted in co-operative values, which had been the focus at the schools even before the co-operative structure. Many decades ago I was part of the group of co-operators that would run co-operative projects in schools and dream of what could be if it became a whole school activity. At Sir Thomas Boughey I saw that dream becoming reality.


If one lifetime isn't long enough, but the early start that the learners at the school are taking will give them a head start on the rest of of us in understanding the wonderful diversity of co-operation around the world.