A Call for Co-operative Growth
Leading UK co-operatives are calling on all political parties to commit to co-operative growth at the next general election.
We are co-operatives. We are democratic businesses with purpose beyond profit, sharing power and wealth across the economy, from farming to retail and renewable energy to manufacturing. We are common endeavors, proving that people achieve more together than they do alone.
We call on all political parties who share our values of democracy, self-help and solidarity to commit to co-operative growth at the next general election. If you unleash our potential, we will deliver.
Our six offers
Rapid development of the UK’s co-operative economy will be instrumental in delivering inclusive, responsible, wellbeing-enhancing growth. We can do this through six unique offers:
- Brilliant businesses: more resilient, responsible, ambitious and effective businesses
- A stake and a say: sharing power and wealth through day-to-day business
- Making work pay: more rewarding, empowering, wellbeing-enhancing livelihoods
- Thriving communities everywhere: from inner cities to remote islands
- A just transition: a national effort to reach net zero, powered by mutuality and community
- Fixing broken systems: powerful innovations to fix broken systems like social care, data and housing
Business as usual is failing and wrecking the planet in the process. For more than a century, we have pioneered a better way of doing business and serving communities. While we are still something of a ‘best-kept-secret’ in the UK, we are growing in number and already punch above our weight.
Globally co-operatives are a significant force, offering genuine alternatives to corporate myopia, knee-jerk government, trickledown philanthropy and passive consumerism. The UK needs to be part of this.
Four policy priorities
To unleash the UK’s co-operative potential, the next government will need to work with us to deliver four policy priorities:
- Unlock options for co-operatives to raise more capital from investors and communities – including legislative reform, tax reform and action by the British Business Bank
- Remove unnecessary barriers to co-operation – including improving co-operative law and regulation and making competition enforcement more supportive of desirable economic co-operation
- Accelerate the proliferation of replicable co-operative solutions in broken systems like social care, energy, housing, data and culture – including by supporting secondary co-operative networks and other specialist intermediaries, and by removing barriers in sector-specific policy
- Ensure communities, workers, entrepreneurs and businesses are supported to explore and adopt co-operative options for realising their aspirations – by creating new legal rights for workers and communities to bid for businesses and business assets at critical junctures, and resourcing local co-operative development
Everybody's Business: A Call for Co-operative Growth
Backed by the UK's biggest co-operatives
Our members have thrown their weight behind calls for all political parties to act – and your co‑operative can join the campaign. Individuals can also register their support.
The Co-op, Central Co-op, Midcounties Co-op, Lincolnshire Co-op, Scotmid, East of England Co-op, Southern Co-op, Chelmsford Star Co-op, Heart of England Co-op, Radstock Co-operative, Suma, Greenwich Leisure Limited, National Merchant Buying Society, The Wine Society, HF Holidays, Edinburgh Bicycle Co-operative, Confederation of Co-operative Housing, Unicorn Grocery, Delta T, Carbon Co-op, Dulas, workers.coop, Bow Creek Moorings, Great Central Gazette, Oxford Community Land Trust, Co-operatives and Mutuals Wales, Physio First, Co-operative Futures, Credit Union Solutions, Grampian Growers, The Developer Society, Campaign Co-operative, Co-operative Heritage Trust, Marlow Energy Group, Co-operative Alternatives, Ethical Consumer, Centre for Local Economic Strategies, Sustainable Danbury, Energy4All, Bath Housing Co-operative, West Granton Housing Co-operative, Common Wealth, Community Energy England, The Bell Inn, Credit Union Solutions.
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