Dwi'n gweithio i'r gael, a gwneud hynny'n gweithio fath o'r 9.30 oes yna, o'r ddweud o'r Cwp Cwnggras. Felly, mor hwnnw i ddau i ddau i'w cyhoedd a'r cyfan o'r cyfan. A'n ddigonio'n ddweud o'n ddweud. Fy enw'r cyfan, yr ydych chi'n gweithio'n gweithio'r barhau i gael. Byddwn yn fawr'r cyfloshol, felly mae'n fawr yw'n fawr. We had a tidy eleven. A shoes solve of a lot not so well done everybody were getting up. I'm and it's brilliant because everybody was talking and creating ideas and telling me about all the deals that they've been doing between other co-operatives. There's absolutely loads going on today, a quick little bit of housekeeping. We're not expecting a fire alarm. Thank you for not evacuating the building yesterday. For those of you that are here in y new today, the smoking area is obviously I'r llymau o'r llymau sy'n meddwl hynny. Mae hi'n gweithio gael gwych oherwydd a ydych chi i gyd yn gallu ar holl yn gweithio ar gweithio'r llymau ac yn ystafell o'r llymau sydd ei ddweud ein gwneud hynny. Rwy'n meddwl i'n cyffredin iawn i'r program yma dyma, a roeddwn i'r pernod Tracey Graebin, y maes yng Nghymru i ymddir, y maes yng Nghymru i ymdill, i ddisgu'r regio, Mae'r cyfnodd iawn i'r cyfnodd iawn, mae'n cychwyn ffordd. Ond mae'n ddweud, y 11 o'n clwr ar draws, rwy'n cael ei gweithio yn un o'r ddweud o John Robb a Andy Burnham, a mae'n ddweud yn fawr o'r angen o'r angen o'r angen o'r angen o'r angen. Rwy'n cael ei ddweud. Rwy'n cael ei ddoch chi'n gwneud o'r cyfnodd iawn o'r panell ar hyn o'r angen o'r angen o'r angen o'r angen o'r angen o'r dr George MacGavin here with us today and last night as well so if you can again please do make noise hashtag co-op congress please do send links if you know people that are interested in the challenges around climate change and what they can do to help please point them to the fact if you go to co-ops UK congress now it's just a button that says listen live so please text people and let them know yesterday we had as many people online as we did in the room so it's really fantastic. Okay so absolutely delighted this morning to welcome to open up data of co-op congress councillor Ian Ward who is the leader of Birmingham city council thank you. Thank you very much and good morning ladies and gentlemen it's a huge pleasure to welcome you all to Birmingham and I want to congratulate you on your excellent timing because 2022 is a very special year for this very special city. In just 40 days time the eyes of the world will be on this city as we stage while I'm confident will be an unforgettable commonwealth games and the games are just one of the many reasons why I've labelled this a golden decade of opportunity for the people and communities of Birmingham. This is our time to shine and we're grabbing the opportunity with both hands showcasing our dynamic creative and inventive city. This is also a city of fantastic grassroots organisations a city of collaboration and rich community capital and a city with a proud cooperative and mutual heritage stretching right back to the formation of the world's first building society at the golden cross inn at Aston in 1775. Two years ago Birmingham city council became the 75th member of the cooperative council's innovation network giving us an excellent opportunity to learn from best practice from across the country and last month's council elections saw 14 labour and co-op councillors elected in Birmingham that's over 20% of the ruling labour group. Four of those members Bridget Jones, John Cotton, Karen McCarthy and Jane Francis are cabinet members so this movement has members in positions of influence in Birmingham but more importantly there's the thriving grassroots cooperative movement with organisations like Birmingham friends of the earth, Birmingham students housing co-op, Bournville works housing society and Just Film co-op. The acting wellbeing service is a community benefit society in cooperative that has worked closely with the council particularly through the COVID pandemic to develop healthy happy communities living active and connective lives and if you want to understand the true potential of this movement look no further than the exciting sturchly cooperative development which will provide mixed use premises for two worker co-ops a community co-op and cooperative housing in a new building on sturchly high street. I'm sure many of you know there's already a rich cooperative tradition sturchly with the Birmingham bike foundry art fact gallery and cafe and loaf a cooperative run bakery and cookery school these fantastic organisations are joining forces to create an affordable and eco-friendly residential and retail premises in the heart of sturchly this exciting development could lead the way to other initiatives in Birmingham and it's vital that the council understands and supports the true potential of people who simply roll up their sleeves and get on with it in communities right across the city because as we've seen throughout the COVID pandemic we're our strongest when large anchor organisations like the council work in close collaboration with charities community organisations and other partners we've seen the very best of Birmingham over the last few years and I've never been prouder of this city the contribution from community and voluntary groups from ordinary bromeys working alongside the council and its many partners has been nothing short of outstanding as together we've supported our most vulnerable citizens now that team Birmingham approach and the community spirit we've seen in every neighbourhood and community is needed more than ever if we're going to tackle the long-standing issues that have held far too many people back in Birmingham and as we all know we do face big challenges this is a city of haves and have nots a city of health and social inequality and a city where 42% of children live in relative poverty the sad truth is that boom or bust far too many people in communities across this city do not feel they have a stake in Birmingham's economy and it's not enough to simply patch up a system that's been finding far too many people across the city for many years we must take a different approach that's why i'm proud of the council's community wealth building work with the birmingham anchor network established in january 2020 following an 18 month project led by clare's and funded by the barrow cabbary trust to understand the role anchor institutions play in the birmingham economy the anchor network works to support the six participating organisations to maximise the benefit they bring to the birmingham economy both individually and collectively with combined budgets of approximately five billion pounds and a workforce of over 50 000 these anchor institutions are major economic agents and by collaborating on working key areas of procurement employment and management of land and assets we have the potential to play a powerful role in shaping the city economy so why is this relevant to cooperatives in birmingham well a key way in which network members can support cooperatives in the city is with an ever greater focus on local procurement of goods and services to retain wealth locally to that end we have designed a small contracts procurement hub which will increase the number of small public sector works contracts being won by birmingham based sms and social enterprises and we've conducted an audit of small contract opportunities those that are less than 25 000 pounds identified likely sectors for increased local spend and we've now produced a list of 40 birmingham based social enterprises to match those sectors our challenge as we go forward is to build on the work of the birmingham anchor network over the last two and a half years so we're now committed to increasing our collective local spend to ensure that birmingham based sms social enterprises and of course cooperatives can benefit i'm also interested to hear of other ways that we can and should work with cooperatives and other grassroots organisations particularly in our approach to the next big challenge facing the people of birmingham the cost of living crisis because just as we work with the likes of the active well-being society throughout the pandemic we're now looking to work with community partners across the city to support the growing number of birmingham households who are struggling to make ends meet we all know that this will be a huge challenge but it's one that we must collectively rise to and with a proud history of supporting communities particularly on issues like food justice and community energy i'm sure cooperatives across birmingham have a part to play as more and more people in neighbourhoods right across the city reach crisis point so please talk to us share your ideas and let's work together to support our friends and neighbours in this fast developing crisis now i understand that you had a productive and enjoyable day here yesterday and i trust that today's sessions will be just as well received for those of you are not from birmingham i also hope you've taken the opportunity to see what this great city has to offer and i would urge as many of you as possible to return later this summer when birmingham will be at its welcoming best as we host the 22nd edition of the commonwealth games thank you all very much and good luck for today thank you so much i and so much going on it's very exciting as we talked about yesterday one of the key aims of our strategy is to talk to communities in the way that they understand and really tap into the issues of the day no better example this morning than community shares offer so i'm going to welcome to the stage to explain a little bit more john darson from cooperatives uk thanks rose we're just going to do a quick community shares takeover this morning i'm going to see if it moves to the next slide there we are so i've heard quite a few people talk about community shares as the best kept secrets and for us community shares is a user friendly term that we use to talk about the more technical aspects of withdrawable non transferable share capsule which is perhaps why you can see we talk about community shares instead but we know that it's a very stable and resilient business model our research has found that over 92 percent of businesses who've used community shares are still trading and since 2012 over 200 million pounds has been raised through community shares and that's by people over 128 000 investors and what we really love about that is that it's individuals backing projects that they care about in their communities and these are projects that they're either going to use or trade with things that they can physically see and it's a unique way of getting capital patient capital and directly from people in their communities into projects they care about we also provide the community shares standard mark which is an external assessment of a share offer document and as an unregulated financial product this is a good way of maintaining standards within the sector and we're really pleased that 228 standard marks have been awarded to date and that there's been really strong take up of the community shares standard mark the booster fund itself in england we've been very lucky to have been able to invest over 3.2 million pounds now and that's in 56 investments so this is our way of providing development grants and matched equity support to community share offers and it has helped to catalyse and grow the community shares market in england our 3.2 million has helped leverage an additional 9.5 million pounds and that's from communities putting their own money into projects that they can see and that they love so we've invested alongside those investors on the same terms and these are community share offers all across england and you can see there that the types of projects we're investing in we're trying to invest in projects and in communities that are less affluent and that need that little bit of a boost to give the community the confidence that their share offer is going to succeed and take off so i'm just going to talk to you about two examples before i hand over to mark that we've worked with um the slide to keep jumping forward i'm not sure why that is but in grimsby each mouth east marsh united we've provided them with support um to help them with their share offer and this is one of the least affluent areas of the country and the people there just became sick and tired of the quality of housing and they've taken it upon themselves to organise and to create a share offer to raise capital to buy the houses to refurbish them and to let them uh to local people um and to manage them themselves their share offer has a few more days left to run they're currently at about 375 000 they're looking to raise over 400 000 pounds and that will enable them to buy a number of houses and refurbish them and then another one is down in bristill stokescroff land trust who are concerned about gentrification of share offers and they closed recently and raised 328 000 and that was from 207 investors and by doing that they were able to keep this community building that they loved and cherished in community ownership i'm not quite sure what's happening there sorry uh they were able to keep that in community ownership and we've invested alongside both of those organisations alongside the community to make sure that those projects are sustainable to give them the boost that they need so we're really pleased to do that the good news is we are just negotiating more equity to continue it to invest so we will be able to keep doing this and it's something we want to continue to grow as well to enable more community share offers from different communities across the country and hopefully beyond england as well but now i'm going to hand you over to mark this is one of the latest share offers um you've got this on your table as well but i'll hand you over to mark he's going to give you a quick run through uh about the owner venue share offer and if you want to find out a bit more we're both speaking with Dave Boyle and Eva from Repowering London at 11 o'clock on the community shares session as well thanks um normally when I do one of these and I'm doing an awful lot of them at the moment I have to explain what a community benefit society is why people might invest their own money I feel like you already know that so I'm going to abandon all that stuff and John's just done a great simple explanation there um what I do want to talk about though is um why why in our particular sector which is the music industry how have we ended up thinking that we need to take ownership of our buildings what's the driver of that so just quickly I don't know if you all saw the music panel yesterday or I know some of you did um but basically we're here they gave me a head mic so I could dance around to interpretive dance for you earlier in the morning this whole sector here the bottom of the pyramid that is the live music industry is a vast array of different grassroots music venues grassroots music pubs they are largely whether they know it or not not for profit entities when we started doing this work only 3% of them were registered as a not for profit entity the rest of them were limited companies or sole traders but these days we've managed to raise that to 26% we have the goal of moving that towards 60 or 70% in the next 10 years why is that because their job is to put on music that nobody likes yet that's when they're doing their job really really well when nobody wants to buy any tickets and nobody wants to be there because they don't know who the band is as soon as a band does start selling tickets they move up to the console hall circuit where money actually is being made so our our role is really the foundation of the whole industry and we don't just do it for the live industry if you can name any any artist for the last 60 years Glastonburyness next weekend Paul McCartney's headlining the cabin club Ed Sheeran played 366 shows at this bottom level and the stunning thing about that is of those 366 shows that he played in the last 20 years 150 of those venues are closed down that's how bad our problem is if I can make the slide work why does that matter because music venues this type of music venues sit at the middle of a grassroots ecosystem that creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in in each of our communities the existence of a music venue means that you've got all these other services around it the real ignition engines of activity for the music industry but also for communities I call this the kebab question in fact we finished here late so late last night I didn't even manage to go and get a kebab they closed down I've eaten a lot of kebabs as you can probably tell have I ever left my house 1130 to go and buy a kebab no that's never happened why do I buy a kebab because I come out of the concert hall I'm hungry and I go and buy a kebab how do you support the kebab shop owners of the UK open more music venues because people will leave their house and they will go and do something they will take transport there they will go to a pub or a bar beforehand they will go to a nightclub afterwards but you need to give them a reason to be active in the night time economy so what's our problem 35% of GMBs have closed in the last 20 years this is the big one for this room 93% of grassroots music venues in this country are tenants and the average amount of time they've got left on the lease is 18 months so we we represent music venue trust our charity represents nearly 950 of these venues almost all of them are effectively at a risk of closing down within the next 18 months because the landlord will change the tenancy agreement even if they can carry on they'll be on a new tenancy agreement where they can be booted out really really quickly you can read on the screen I don't need to do all that I'm going to tell you the real real challenge here is who owns these properties who owns the freehold what do they want their commercial landlords or investment companies they want to make money what do they really want in a tenant they want a very quiet tenant who's got lots of money and can pay it to them what's a music venue I've just told you they're not for profit entities and what do they do they make a lot of noise so we have an absolute clash between the commercial landlords what they want and what the music venue wants to do there are some solutions to it we've supported some people to buy their own properties that's difficult because then you'd get into the thing of a personality a lot of these venues are driven by one person that person doesn't want to do it anymore they'll sell the same as the commercial landlord will sell we've supported some Lenny Watson was here yesterday from sister midnight I hope some of you got to talk to her they're trying to open one in Lewisham they're using the community benefit society model to do that what we've done is to look at this in a macro style and the reason we've done that is because we're not convinced and John mentioned about how the great work you're doing supporting areas of deprivation relative deprivation giving them support to take control of their assets and their communities what we've done is to look at our problem and say okay we have two communities we have the local community who really wants their music venue to be there and we have the whole of our music industry and every music fan in the country who understands that without these venues we won't have any more Adele's or Ed Sheeran's or Dewa Leeper's all artists that started their careers in these places so we decided to create music venue properties we've got a lot of literature on the table for you anybody can come and find me afterwards we've set up a charitable community benefit society we're raising money for the community shares model we're looking to raise in the pilot project we're doing we're going to buy nine venues place them into this permanent state of charitable ownership create a new type of lease and that lease will be hinged on the one key factor that these venues must provide music to their communities and they must provide opportunities for new and emerging artists to perform music that nobody likes yet we've got nine properties in it 3.5 million it's live now you can go to music venue properties please go to music venue properties i would love to have viewers our investors i want everybody to invest in that i want everybody to have a sense of ownership of the music in their community have it in a protected status so we got their phone out and gone to the link yet i'm just checking whether okay no maybe not but please take a look we're we're live now we've already raised over 10 we're getting it from all different kinds of people people who love music people who can see the value of the scheme people who are like you in this room who just believe in the power of community our latest investor is mr andy bernham so i'd like to welcome andy to the stage thanks for investing well are you gonna or are you gonna play well morning everybody great to great to see it and actually i didn't have half your kebab but i didn't have half your sandwich last night didn't you did so i know he had to put up with a homeless sandwich instead of a kebab but anyway we didn't even give him the whole thing um so i've i've just done it i'm a member i've signed up this morning uh so i'm asking all of you to do the same uh because i think this is something uh the answers a kind of massive call that's always out there in a place like Manchester this happens to me all of the time you know you you just can be there on any given day and a kind of rush of anxiety kind of springs up over a venue uh because someone's had noticed from a a landlord you know or the lease on well we had it with a club last week uh called south there was a uh well it has closed unfortunately um night and day in Manchester currently under threat and actually you look at our city the venues we've lost i mean you know the most famous one the hacienda but there've been others that we've lost over the years this is critical infrastructure for the country that's the way i would i would describe it it's not just nice to have this is about the talent development ground for actually what what is probably britain's most famous export alongside football in these in these days it is music puts us on the world stage and yet why are we so i don't know you know casual about it i think the industry should put more back into the trust actually you know in football the football foundation the premier league all we have all criticism about it but it does give some of the tv money back to the grassroots through the football foundation where's the music industry why aren't they giving why aren't the big big venues giving some money back to the grassroots venues i mean that's a fair shout isn't it they should be putting a percentage back in to support their own their own grassroots but anyway i'm really proud to have to have signed up and uh i hope you'll you'll do the same i you might hear later on today when i speak to john i was involved as you may know with the creation of supporters direct uh just over 20 years ago and that created supporters trust across the country and when i used to go to those meetings what i used to see was kind of young people in their 20s 30s walking through the door to start talking about setting up a cooperative and it was about taking the movement to a demographic and a new generation that perhaps wouldn't wouldn't have got there by the by other other ways because they were coming in to deal with something they really cared about and i think music venues and football clubs are kind of right up there in terms of things that people really really care about care about so much that they will put their hand in their pocket on the day that they're being asked to try and try and save them and if that is then by the vehicle of a cooperative a community benefit society it takes the values of the cooperative movement to a new generation and uh you know people who perhaps hadn't thought before about about the cooperative movement and that's the power of this as well as well as it's saving these venues which are important it builds the values of the movement into a new generation uh and that's why we should all get out there and spread the word and support it so well done mark you got my uh my full support music venues trust they're a fantastic fantastic organisation uh and uh hearing well most in greater Manchester we are massively behind you great thank you very much everybody i'm sorry about that right okay we're going to go into our next session straight away so and if you can join us on the chairs and uh Cheryl Balrox so we're going to be talking about care and co-ops and and what the local opportunity is um and we've got about until 1045 on this one before you get your first refreshment break of the morning so unusually for ande this is uh this isn't this isn't for Andy to set out a a policy or an idea this is something that's it's been you know this is a learning session we are here to learn um we just talked there about things that really matter to people and health and social care is is also up there as a as a major concern for many many people um i'll just declare that i am no expert my expertise is having a husband with a chronic disease for uh 38 years and just the frustrations of the systems and the lack of strategic thinking or the lack of voice as a patient or even the wife of a patient that's even worse um so so i'm here to learn and the reason i'm here to do this is the minute that i was appointed um as CEO of co-operatives uh UK um you know continuously but one of the first things that Andy said to me when i got in post is is what can we do in in care what can we do and i don't know is the truth but i do know this something so what we're going to do today is explore that and we've got lots of people joining us with ideas and this is so that we can we can learn and take away both on behalf of co-operatives UK and uh and it is a mayor with the most significant powers actually in health and social care and developed powers because we want to lead the way and we want to find a way to give that uh voice so i'm going to start with with yourself and it's huge huge year as well as football and music huge area of passion uh for you so and so not only the health and social care but co-operatives as well just tell us a little bit about your experience and your passion and where you think the opportunities might be yeah um so people may remember rose um 10 or so years ago when i was health secretary we worked together didn't we at that at that time um i tried to reform social care and i still believe care and its broadest sense in this country needs needs quite radical reform to be honest i personally believe that social care should be provided on nhs terms where everyone contributes but then everyone is is covered for their care needs all of their care needs for all of their life but we haven't got that at the moment the bottom line is i think the profit motive does not sit well at all with with care of any kind and actually that is the problem because the more complex people's care needs become the more that that profit motive becomes a problem um because the more that the uh the system then doesn't want to to support somebody's the more expensive somebody's care needs get so you've got this is broken completely this system and it's not just adult social care did everyone see the independent children's social care review recently uh that call for a similar overhaul of of children's social care actually talks about the establishment of regional care co-ops rose and you know i'd be interested in a greater Manchester care co-op that's something we could we could work on so that's where i'm coming from you know a system that dishes out care in 15 minute visits by kind of staff who are on poverty pay uh zero hours contracts you can never ever get a care system that the country needs from from that you just can't it's unfair to the people who give care it's unfair to the people who receive care uh it means that money is is extracted out what little money we have in the care system is extracted out sometimes by unscrupulous employers it this is this is actually an area that the country is crying out for the cooperative movement to move in and bring its solutions to this broken uh damaged uh sector and uh what we waiting for well so now uh i do have an expert fortunately with me both in cooperatives and in uh care so Cheryl before we get into fair care just tell us a little bit about yourself because you're also on the board of cooperatives UK and you are also a serial co-operator i am a serial co-operator i'm the co-chair of the co-op parties disability forum and the secretary sitting here with me and i'm also the chair of sheffield cooperative development group so i have an overview of how co-ops are developed and nurtured and sustained and i was a an associate director of better government for older people i'm a mental health social worker by qualification and a community worker by practice and i'm also disabled myself my as i'm sitting here i've got people sitting over there at the table with my medical note so that if they fall if it all goes tits up i'll get a lining and i'll survive and i'm going to take Andy with me so they don't slap a dnr notice on me because i'm a trouble cause uh so i think they would like rid of me and they could do it so easily so and when i've gone into my conspiracy theory now i'll stop there the other thing before i really get into this i worked on pops partnerships for older people and we kind of gave the our results of that and i think that still stands the national health service were fantastic we were with older people disabled people we proved the pounds shillings and pens that is saved if people have adequate care they don't go into distress why why would we put people there and because i'm sitting with rodin and andy and all of you and i've got a nice uh audience i want to say some of the identity truths that we don't talk about we don't talk about what it is to be a disabled person and have to apply for PIP and be degraded in order to pay for your care we don't mention it in in public but some of us have been through it and it is degrading we don't talk about the carers who are working and still have to apply for benefits and are degraded within the benefit system we don't talk about poverty and what poverty does to people and that by the money is in the system the money is there in the system but we make that money circulate in such ways that people have to beg and be degraded in order to get a surface from money that if it was properly spent we could deliver we could deliver that properly and i'm i'm here well before i'm going to my plea i want to know do you have a photograph or some portray in your attic because you don't look any different i feel it if that's any consolation i'm gonna search your house as i find it i want the cooperators in here because i did the box yesterday for ccin to talk about the situated self and how it works the legislation the policy the framework and all of that the technical stuff but in reality although we have to acknowledge that technical stuff and the the legal aspects of how this is done for cooperators we need a mind shift too because we think in terms of businesses i love coops uk on the bike chair but we're the lab in diversion of the chamber of commerce if we really want to be service providers we have to have a service think within the co-op movement and we have to co-produce with the public sector what do you mean less institutional than our focus do you mean less focused on certain types of vehicles and institutions and more about collaboration cooperation in it as a system yeah networking yeah you talked about it a lot yesterday didn't we and there was a lot of people talking about it on on twitter and you know we did get quite a few challenges from the lights a picture about not getting caught up in the constitution the principles and actually the idea of cooperating just to magnify jump in because i think you've made a profoundly important point when i came in as mayor of greater Manchester we had a very big homelessness crisis and i said i would want to do something about rough sleeping and what i remember most about that time of trying to get everybody together was how competitive the voluntary and community sector was everyone individually thought they could solve it you know they had the monopoly on the ideas to solve homelessness in greater Manchester and i remember kind of being at a meeting saying hang on a minute you can't have egos when it comes to homelessness it's bigger than all of us you have to everyone has to sort of recognise we're all going to have to play a part in the in the whole and it was kind of important really because then we created the great much of homelessness action network really networked people and there were a range of you know social enterprises in the room and actually in the end people did start to point in the same direction and the change really did so i just wanted to sort of say that is such a profoundly we'd need to talk about cooperation within a system don't we or within a network where everyone's got their contribution but actually in the end it's the as a philosophy yes not as a business model yes and care needs treating in the same way absolutely and that's perfect perfect segue into exactly what you're doing with the with the fair care mark and we do have some slides here just pointing this out so tell us about the fair care mark and what you're trying to achieve well well as Andy said when Andy was talking did you all notice that he kept saying fair this is not fair this is not fair and we don't keep saying that because we're not a three year olds yeah we say it because it is not fair it is inherently exploitative so if you look at you know fair trade as a model we can apply fair care so we can make care there and in order to do that it has to be fair to everybody involved so as Andy said this this is a multi nodal system including the people who are informal carers i'm disabled i want ownership but i don't want ownership just as currently is known in the co-op movement now that i'm a share owner or i am a worker co-operator i am an owner which implies agency i don't know a disabled person and neither do you who wants to be a product of somebody's worker co-op or wants to be done too or wants to be done for we want to be done with and we want to move beyond co-production so in the public sector we talk about co-production and that quickly dissolves and degrades into consultation where we've already know where we want to go and we have a few people in and they nod and we get their approval that's not what we want either what we want is to bring together the relational co-operation all of you are caring for somebody i know you are and i have lots of conversations with people within without the co-op movement when you tell me your stories heartbreaking stories of your care needs or your mother's care needs or your brothers or your sons your daughters your sisters we're all in this together we really are and yet we tolerate the intolerable to ourselves and our loved ones so what i came up with with three care fair care is the three Cs is the concept which Andy outlined is that we we need to cooperate beyond our usual boundaries and what we think of as being co-operation so that's the concept and it is fair to everyone involved and it's cooperative in as much as it's mutual i care for my carers i care what happens to them i care that they have sufficient salary to live their lives of the children on uproats of impoverty i care you care we all care they care for me they come into an industry if you like a situation where they are not going to get a great salary or a career opportunity but they have an empathy that is is beyond and and above but it's not it's not a qualification you cannot qualify in empathy it's in a and we don't treat people and value people and i think some of that is about we don't value disabled people we don't value older people and people who are adjacent to the unvalued become devalued themselves so that the fairness has to be in built because that's that's what cooperation brings mutuality responsibility fairness the second is the campaign and like andy i've been campaigning for years for this so this is my big moment after all of this you know shouting and pleading here i am with rose and andy and like let's do it please please let's do it i'll get on i'll spend a lot of time on my knees but i'll get down now if if we can you know let's let's do this and the last part of those three c's is care co-ops and we have a few now they're out there on the terrain but we need to be honest about what those co-ops can do the situation in which they're trying to deliver the care and it's not about decrying anybody or saying the people in there aren't doing the best they can do but we are all in it together including the politicians because they're the ones who can legislate and change the overall system in which we can operate and i think i'll leave it there so people can join in the conversation brilliant okay so we've got um let's say the whole point about fair care and this will be launching Cheryl in the summer launching the summer Cheryl fair care fair care the mark hey hang on a minute you've stole our b logo there have you have you paid the royalties it's the great amanchester and powerful no no i haven't i have actually if you look at that logo what i did was i didn't steal it i gave a nod to if you notice um suffraject colors the suffraject colors exactly i've taken it's a guild so i'm petition andy what were you doing no i like it i like it i love it i love it i'm loving it i'm loving it i'm loving it and that should be on t-shirts i think we need exactly and the buttons and i want i want your all to go away and stick it on your banners on twitter and campaign for this that we want fair care and what we will do is i set up a guild of social and community workers cooperative it does exactly what it says on the team it is the cooperative guild of social and community workers and we've got ourselves to get there in order to help people who want to deliver care to set up a proper bonyf ID co-op yeah that will do all of that fairness that we've said we will we will walk them through it because we've got that skills that background in social work community work and cooperation so we're here we're staying we'll help you do that but also there'll be people on that panel who will assess what we've done and the journey we've been on and if that care is fair to everybody it will get the fair care mark so if you need care you'll be able to look for that mark because like andy said the the we can't change the situation yet though we will keep campaigning but the ones who are trying to do something and are getting there we will support and we will give them the fair care mark so that if you need care you can look at that and say this is a place i want to be this is the care i want to receive and this is the care i want to give fantastic so we're now going to invite like say we're trying lots of new and different things at this co-op congress 2022 and one of them is this idea of hosting so we are going to be inviting different care health and social care co-ops to tell us to make their demands in actual facts about what they want to see to empower that cooperation and for us to do more and then i am going to keep them tight on time because i'm sure these questions as well from the audience so we're going to try and get some of those in as well so i'm going to start first of all i'd like to welcome to the stage not only a brilliant social enterprise and cooperative and it's scott darra from suzer CEO of social adventures if you can come up scott and tell us all about what social adventures does and what you believe would be the key to greater cooperation morning everyone i've really been strong armed into this by roll she's doing something for me on monday she said you've got to come down and speak at the congress so i'm really glad to be here i'm scott darra i'm the chief executive of a an nhs spin out called social adventures we escaped from the nhs in 2010 just before austerity was due to hit so we run public health learning disabilities and mental health services and we set up as a community benefit society um when we when we spun out of the nhs it was really important for me to actually put the kind of control back in people's hands you know in the nhs we do some great things but often we do things to people not with people so it was really important that we did that and and as well as being the chief executive social adventures i'm really proud to be the chief executive of health care which is a homelessness refugee and asylum seeker gp practising leeds and bradford and they're set up again as a as a community benefit society so there are some really great examples across the country of where mutual approaches community ownership employee ownership has been at the heart of health and social care the problem is i don't think i think as andy said i think the real problem the elephant in the room is that we don't work very well collaboratively so we can't get the scale that we need so one of my kind of big passions is around how we can create a social prime in care and health to actually take on and go toe to toe with some of the big private sector providers and also to really reform health and social care as andy says we really need a you know a revolution when it comes to care one of the things that we're doing in in in manchester we're launching on monday a task force looking at children in care in greater Manchester that'll be i'll be having a chat with andy afterwards i'll be knobbling him over coffee and that is around kind of trying to bring more social sector organisations into children in care because that has been you know all social sector organisations have moved out of that space the public sector have and it's meant that that private sector organisations have just been extracting profit out of it at the misery of children which is just appalling so i think we need a wholesale kind of review of how these things are done i think as well some of the organisations that have spun out of the public sector and there's about 120 across the country that have done that who are set up with high levels of employee ownership and the set of social enterprises don't actually see themselves as part of the co-op movement so my big ask to to to rose is about how we bring those those care and health organisations into the co-op movement and how we make sure that we can link up with some of the the organisations in this room where they're at scale you know you're running you know big enterprises how can we partner up with those organisations because we have the expertise in health and care but you guys have got the scale and the spread to actually make these things impactful so my ask to to rose is how do we bring these organisations into into the sector and i think the other part of it is how do we create social primes to actually take on and go toe to toe with the private sector brilliant stay there scott because i'm sure there's more questions and victor add of a while yesterday who has got considerable experience in the hs was saying that 30% of all NHS contracts across the country are delivered by some form of social or community organisation and we should have an ambition to double that by creating a cooperative that like can so just talk about what you mean by a prime because this is what procurement you're talking about yeah so you know i think to create i think we can use a cooperative approach so using you know organisations that are based in place um actually building a kind of a partnership model so they continue to operate at a place level but they have the scale to actually take on some of these these like logistics things so one of the things that we did in greater Manchester about about five years ago we actually created the first health and social care limited liability partnership and we brought together nine organisations under one banner with a turnover of 53 million and that was because you know we were seeing public sector contracts kind of creeping up so the scale of those contracts were getting much too big for one organisation to be able to to be able to operate under and what we were also finding is because of the problem with competition because we've been working in these strange arbitrary markets for the last 20 or 30 years it means that organisations are often pitted against each other which actually destroys any co-operation and that means that innovation is stifled because you can't freely share your your intellectual property because you're scared that someone else will compete with you so we created the llp as a as a kind of a proof of concept really to see that that could be done and i'd like to see that model replicated in other sectors and in other parts of the country as well Andy Sherrill any comments or questions for scott oh i've got yeah if you don't mind rose um you've touched on it scott but tell tell me a bit more what is the change in commissioning behaviour that we need to see to pave the you know open up a whole new world of co-operation because i i criticised people saying working in their silos even voluntary organisations but as you say that the commissioning world has encouraged that kind of mentality hasn't it so what's the what are commissioners need to do to enable what what we all want to see so i was a commissioner in the nhs for three years i only lasted three years they told me that it wasn't for me they literally said you need to get a different job because i was pushing for some of this stuff back then i mean one of the problems with commissioning is often in a in a tender they say that they want partnership working you know often they say one partnership um but they only give you two weeks to form a partnership so what that means is you end up scrubbing around trying to build a partnership around a contract and partnerships shouldn't be built around an opportunity they should be built around they should be built around a shared set of values so i think that what we have to do is we have to be working with commissioners and commissioners have to see themselves as partners in the process and they have to shape those markets and shape those partnerships before things go out to tender so i think the idea that you can create a really meaningful value-based partnership in a fortnight two weeks before Christmas probably isn't in the work and how about social value commissioning is that being used enough and do we need to have a sort of say 20 percent social value waiting on in all care commissioning would you say i think yeah i think social value has started to kind of creep into public sector procurement which is a good thing um i think sometimes the way that it's interpreted is different depending on where you are and what contract you're going for so i think we need a bit more of a clearer understanding of what what creates social value in not just in the contract but in in terms of the the type of organization that you're commissioning so i think they need to understand that a little bit one last question i'm firing the questions at you about one last one independent children's social care review yes talks about regional care co-ops if we were to set up a great initiative care co-op just give me a sense of what that could look and feel like so one of the things that we're trying to do with the task force on monday is invite people to join become members of the task force and part of that is signing up to a shared set of values if we had if we encourage social sector organizations to get into the children in care sector you'll have 100 people setting up children's homes but it won't switch the sides in terms of actually making the change so i think one of the things for me is around having having a platform creating a platform that organizations can buy into a little bit like shared lives plus that you might have seen in in in learning disability services where people operate under one banner they sign up to the fair care mark i think you know we should be signing up to that because that sounds that sounds like what we want we want fair fair say fair pay for our workers and i think yeah we could create a platform that people could buy into so we could start operating at scale so they still get that delivery locally but they also have that scale because they're part of something bigger great fantastic right okay so thank you very much scott and now like we'd like to welcome to the hosting got about five people there and none of them know which order it's in it's the one on the website Barbara Stevens now chair of mind for you have we got Barbara with us we're not seeing Barbara this morning right okay well we find Barbara i do know Graham is here so Graham if you can join the hostings now Graham Mitchell secretary of colon valet equitable care society thank you Graham and part of the greater Manchester co-op commission as well morning everyone uh yeah sir uh uh of chair actually the uh crop of care colon valet which is a small very local community led uh social care service for adults and we're deliberately very small uh we see that as a as a key benefit uh and we are owned and controlled by a local community and the key stakeholders in our cooperative which is a multi stakeholder organisation are the people that we care for uh the people who do the work um and our group of community investors and together we're developing and designing a model for how we can take that forward our thinking all the way down the line has been to be highly replicable so we've written it all down we've documented our process so that other communities can do the same thing we very much want them to do that um in terms of procurement and commissioning i think i'd comment by saying that there's a real challenge of scale in place because commissioners looking at things through the wrong end of the telescope and they can't see the people on the ground as a result of that and that's a really common problem in commissioning and procurement so if you're going to be effective then you need to get onto the ground i think and start commissioning at a much more micro level in order to get real benefits out of that process um some local authorities can understand that and doing stuff around that i think um others less so so there's a real challenge there but on the on the other side yeah you can uh you know our vision is of a network a federal uh network of lots of little community led uh corporate organizations because my experience tells me very strongly once you start to scale up and get very big you get less cooperative well that stuff starts to get squeezed out because you need more and more professional expertise in to run the organization so you become less accountable you become less cooperative and before you know it you're in a management capture scenario so let's try and avoid that um but so what if i had an ask i'd say what we want is a well funded organization that can act as a development body to promote these small care cooperatives because they're quite easy to do i get we get lots of interest from counselors across the country in our model and we've run loads of webinars around that and we get people from right across the country coming and talking to us and interested in what we're trying to do and how and how they can replicate that in their locality but uh they don't know how to then take the next step so their well intentions um local authorities across the country seem to be well intentioned all the conversations i'm having at the moment but when it comes to actually taking action they sort of stop they get stuck they're paralyzed so we need to address that and i think um that'd be what i'd ask one right questions comments for graham uh my comment i think i'm the only disabled person that's really had a substantial voice in in talking about these co-ops and i've been in places when when we've had these discussions and people have looked at me and are not seen a disability they've seen a professional someone who's spent is a qualified social worker and i've sat in conversations when they've talked about they and them and i think that's fine if they're your personal pronouns me i prefer to be considered in the whole and in the round i'm i'm still not convinced that procurement is the way and i know it's there and we've got to acknowledge it and we've got to work with it but for the people who are being cared for procurement is not the way because it's piecemeal it's it's not what andy was talking about in terms of that care service and i think that's what we need we need andy's idea of that overarching care service because we need not to have a postcode lottery and if you're lucky that you happen to live in an area where there's lots of cooperators that want to get together and help you solve this problem well that's grand but for the rest of us you're still stuck in this really rubbish system so if what andy could campaign for as a politician is a care service that acts in effect as a secondary co-op and that's what we need we need not to get bogged down in that this is not a real co-op it can't be a real co-op because the legislation is not there but we need to have the equivalent of a secondary co-op that is working with commissioners that is doing the safeguarding because the other thing you've got to remember with these experiments with care and and i've campaigned for it is the people who are part of that experiment of vulnerable adults and children so we've got to take some care here in in what we do i'd like to see a commission a co-op commission on care where we bring people together that are trying to solve this and with that i would include the forum the disability forum in the co-op party and all the voices here in in the discussion we co-produce it with an intention to co-own it and the best form of co-ownership by a country mile is the public sector but we haven't got a public sector we've got a state sector so what co-operation can do is bring our values to the public sector so that we have we still have taxation and the way of moving money around the system in effect it's a national community wealth building opportunity for care because we're maintaining the wealth and we're circulating the wealth within that system but we're understanding this is public it belongs to us so it needs asset locking so that it can't get a value and then suddenly be dispersed and sent out because on the sidelines virgin and co are waiting to pick it up because it's become a valuable entity it needs to be asset locked it needs to be co-operative in its values for it needs to be public and looking at taxation because that is fundamentally the best way we have in the uk of shared ownership thank you go on today yeah you guys following on from that if i'm hearing you just saw i'm hearing you correctly small but federated is what your scale up scale out yeah so you get a network of organisations each of which is stays rooted in their local community but that's why Cheryl's right about the secondary for what though isn't it so that everyone or what scott was saying everyone's buying into the same values completely across the federated network yeah and then so one last thought and this is maybe one for you Rose i mean i always kind of come back to supporters direct i love it and you know it was such a because obviously you've got people coming to see you and everyone's trying to reinvent the wheel in their own little community aren't they and then as you say failing uh supporters direct for those who know about it was all about make it easy model constitution you know here's supporters trust in a box we used to say you know that it do we need a supporters direct for care is what i'm trying to say a central enabling unit for me there's a real opportunity to take action on that it's it's low cost you know let's just get on do it yeah there's everything we need is in place central support function that rather than everyone coming knocking on rose that's one for you then there's it not okay brilliant now that's really helpful Graham right okay i'm going to thank you Graham i'm now going to invite Pete Westall who is head of co-op social responsibility at the mid counties co-op you've seen lots of mid counties co-op over congress they are also responsible for the emo pads which i'm sure some of you have been trying out but Pete if you can tell us a little bit about what your co-operative does in and what kind of care and what you think we need to do to enable greater co-operation i need to stay close with mike so thank you for that and both of you really just a passion of this stuff um so where do we come from in mid counties we've always said about intervening in broken markets and it's something i think everybody in this room would say yes that's what you should do mid counties co-op we've got proud record of doing that we've done it with co-op energy specifically we've done it with co-op childcare which i want to talk about in a second but the point about co-operation can make a difference there is a little known co-op which started two years ago co-op group are involved in mid counties are involved in called bright futures co-op bright futures co-op helps victims of modern slavery and the reason it's set up as a co-op is you have referral partners such as hope for justice such as hope he has foundation or whatever sitting on the board you have business partners sky morrisons curries mid counties co-op group sitting on the board but you can also have room for victims of modern slavery sitting on the board and i think that strikes to the heart of what we're all trying to say it's the people who are using the system are the ones we've got to get that voice from mid counties have got co-op childcare and the reason childcare is successful 47 nurseries spread across the length and breadth of the uk is because we have representatives of parents and children sitting making decisions on a daily basis how should that nursery work that's the model which for me is co-operation is finest but there's an issue we've got in co-op childcare and there's an issue and the i think which we need political support on we've got 47 nurseries which operate this is a bit where i'm going to notes 30 individual local authority areas every single one of those local authority areas operates in a totally different way so from a funding point of view we get £4.24 per hour in Gloucester £6.80 per hour in Westminster it's a 60% difference for offering exactly the same service you try running a national business with that sort of funding causes you a problem but there's more each local authority has a different portal each local authority pays at different times each local authority will either give you one remittance or they break it down into separate chunks i passionately agree with what we should be doing here but it's this consistency basis is perhaps the fourth C i would add on to say yes we need collaboration yes we need cooperation but the consistency of author has to be there and that's what we're struggling with from a childcare point of view it just breeds inefficiencies so yes federal co-ops yes regional co-ops but within a framework of consistency wow thank you very much Pete right okay any um well that's just like me i'm a little cute for my feet for the whole of the congress in the fall off bitch yeah i have that effect on people don't you yeah so questions for Pete then any question either of yet i agree with it yeah absolutely and actually i apologized in advance and now i totally agree with you and that's why i think we need that overarching secondary co-op because we we need a relational at scale in neighborhoods small micro co-ops but over that let the people care care let the people who do the administrative can can manage all those competing pay points etc let them do that the people who are good at that let them do that let everybody do what they're good at but cooperate to do it for the benefit of all of it fantastic thank you go on quick well i've been up i know we're always all of us skeptical about uh health service reorganisations but to try and be optimistic could the move to integrated care systems help if it's done right yes because it's a consistency argument and the the bit which occasionally you forget and i will say that rose is really re-invigorated i think this movement on us 12 months we can do this we've got successful examples of people setting up co-ops why not but the wide ambition so that's what we should be doing over the next decade absolutely yes fantastic thank you very much hey right i think we've got our final hostings glinn meredith is glinn here yeah brilliant okay so glinn is from the Cotrefby co-op and i am going to push you on time on this one because we've got about six or seven minutes left and i think there's going to be some questions as well from the audience so um over to you glinn for what you think we need to do yes just a big thank you for welcoming me that so Cotrefby Cymru is a learning disability charity set up as a co-operative in Wales turned over just over 30 million operating in 17 of the 22 local authorities one of our biggest challenges really is the national council sign-up in Wales there's only one of the 22 local authorities and day-to-day working with councils they very much struggle to understand the co-operative model and my question is really and he's great as a politician to hear you passionately talk about co-optives but how can we change council's attitudes to actually make a real difference the next decade oh go on no you go shall no i spent 20 years in a local authority and we don't get up in a morning and think how are we going to make people's lives terrible but we're institutionalised and just like you know we have an escapee from the national health service it's not only the patients who are institutionalised in the health service so are the workers you know and ruskin was a great co-operator said when you hire a pair of hands you get the brain for free and we don't liberate the brain and we don't liberate the brain of our carers we don't liberate the brain of our disabled people children adults we don't liberate that because the care should be there to give you the ability to be the best you can be to live your best life that doesn't matter if you work in care or you're in receipt of care the care should be mutual so the only way we can do it is to speak to those people who are still captured because they've got Nolan they've got principles you know the people in the public sector and the voluntary sector have principles we have principles although they tend to come to us and say you know i'm constantly saying we've got seven values and principles not five magic beans so the elephant in the room is that we just don't put enough money into care but even if we did put money into care would we want to put money into care and then replicate what we've got now so the answer is no so these two things that we've got to get is we've got to have sufficient resources and we've got to liberate the people out of what is a tragic care system and that doesn't matter where you are in this system if you're the care worker who's salary is not sufficient to raise your children and you can't go in holiday in you know in term time but that's the only holiday you can afford we are tracking people in such degraded situations and it affects us all so really i don't think that you would have to try that hard if you were sitting down talking to people in the public sector and telling the human stories that they are also part of i think it's easy to beat them up and i think we all feel frustration at times with councils but i'm going to try and answer i'm going to try and explain why we are where we are before we can try and help them if you like change i think we are where we are because they've had what three decades of tendering and you know and running all of these uh sort of exercises market testing you know that's been the world that they've been in and i have to say the government i was in didn't change it enough so they've kind of been in that sort of lowest cost sort of environment haven't they in terms of procurement for a long time you add a decade of austerity on to that which is kind of whittled out actually experience commissioning staff from you know so the capability is not brilliant if we're honest in in some of the councils not no criticism of the individuals it's just that they've lost staff and then the third thing just to add in is the on top of that the world in which they live is like annual funding rounds where they haven't got enough so how can they break out you know to be fair to them show how can they break out when they got an annual budget on top of everything that's gone before that mentality that's been hardwired into them about lowest cost tender and all of that i think it's it's a sort of paradigm shift is what it needs isn't it you almost got to kind of sell them a come and take a 10 year approach to this working with local local organisations building wealth in communities you know break out of you know take a risk on the you know the funding will be there for 10 years and that i think is and then have a sort of and empower them to sort of think differently along the lines that Cheryl's saying that they won't break out of it if they're stuck in this sort of cycle of one year funding you know you know compulsive you know competitive tendering that that's the sort of thing they've got to be able to encourage to break out of so thank you very much glint very much appreciated i am going to let us run five minutes over because i'm fairly certain we're going to get some questions from from the floor have we got questions right there you go so i knew that i can't do all that in five minutes i'm going to be mean andy you pick who you want your questions we've probably got time for two questions so there we go we've got later here hello my name's Barbara Wersley i'm an MCC member for central co-op so that's who i am rose i love your logo and i love it for two reasons one is that it actually has a b in it and i come from blackburn in Lancashire and we have three bs we're just down the road from Andy in Manchester so we have two more than you so i love it for that i also love the fact that you have you've chosen the colours of the suffragettes and that's perfect for me because one of the things that i feel quite passionate about is that people who are in care whether they be old or young often aren't able because of capacity or whatever to be able to vote and i feel that the carer who has responsibility for a lot well the rest all of their life choices i would like to see a movement to enable the carer to have the right to vote on behalf of the person they're caring for and the reason i say that is because notice respect Andy but politicians rely on votes and there is a whole host of people who do not vote particularly those in care and i think if they were to add the voting to the voting community then i think they would have a voice and i think it's very sad that we don't have one because that fly and it could be because is that something that could could happen i guess the issue would be how do you know that the person is using the vote true to what that do you know what i mean what that person wants to vote for i guess is the issue isn't it that's the i see no i'd take your point yes yeah i can see what you're saying i mean if someone could like do a sort of advanced direction that elections i authorised somebody to vote for me but i want them always to vote this way i don't know you could do it that way couldn't you or you know so that you could have a league anyway but i'd take your points entirely i mean i see i see yeah i get it very good point very good point let me see your hands again i've got one more question in the time of one more question so where do we want to direct the microphone and how do you mean i feel by that i know i've got that i lean driver um what um you've stirred us to action what action could everybody in this room take uh within the next 48 hours that would help and is there any good practice in other countries that could be integrated into today's care and co-ops yes yes there is good practice however i would i would put a cautionary warning on the it's it's situated i've been to Milan and you know i've studied Japan and there are great things but we are where we are and for us it's the interface between the decision it's the decision making that happens with the government in effect that takes in our tax receipts and then disperses them and that is one of the major places where this system is broken so i would say in these dirty action please let us know if it comes back to us and say i'm interested i want to get behind this i want to because there's a campaigning aspect to this and get your MPs behind this and get and get everybody riled up about this we ought to be riled up about this it's a national scandal so there's that aspect of it but then also say if you want to have a big debate about care on what we can do about care these people here from retail societies these people here from worker co-ops we're all here in this room we've all got some capacity that we're not pulling together we're cooperators and the other plea that i would make is for principle seven principle seven is i call it the much malnourished principle seven and it's where social and community should we should live there and inhabit that and build from that because care is not a business even with the best intentions care should not be a business and that's where Andy started so we've got to think out of the box as cooperators or how can we cooperate socially and community where yes there's some aspects will be business of course we've got to transact some business but this is relational this is the relational side of cooperation it needs to have the informal aspects of people we care for our families and our friends and our people that's informal care but that can't be turned into exploitation and it's cooperation that understands mutuality that understands that one minute final word what the thing you saw right Eileen say what's the the call to action and i think we all should get behind fair care and actually unison's ethical care charter as well i think that's worth a shout out as well they've done brilliant work a little bit of little glimmer of hope when it comes to commissioning all 10 great demands to councils now we've signed up to the real living wage for i know it feels like small steps but they are they have and they'll all will pay it from next year so there is some change happening i think the thing that just the takeaway for me is there's an opportunity for the co-op movement to articulate the solution to social care in this country under the banner of a national care service now people hear that phrase and they think it's the statutory sector taking over everything and i know that would kind of cause some concern to to people who don't want to see that kind of medicalization if you like of of of social care so i think there's an opportunity rose to say the national care service is about the entitlement isn't it what what everyone should be entitled to as a right and that's what the n is there isn't it you set the and i think there's an opportunity to describe a cooperative delivered national care service using this model that we've heard about from scott graham and others today you know about small federated networked networked across an ics you know can have across the ics era networking co-ops to deliver national care service standards and i think that there's a there's a big policy there for a certain political party where it wants to be bold enough to go for it it requires that injection of funding by the way from taxation of one kind or another but then that's how i i think this thing needs to be built because people who receive care don't necessarily want care to be all top down and told what to do i absolutely get that so the co-op movement is actually the the place where we need to build a 21st century care service for britain and i think there's a general election looming you rose the one to sort of say how do the co-op how does court movement deliver a national care service and then try and pitch that to political parties one in particular well thank you for your fortune when we get back on we will yeah we will um thank you thank thank you very much for that breeze every time i have a conversation with you i'll get another job so that's very helpful right we've got 10 minute turnaround now to get into uh your other rooms we've got sessions on community shares we've got finance sessions we've got a heritage session and right here like i say i changed the programme we've not got tracy braving but we have got john robb talking to andy about tackling the status quo for you leave big thank you to all our hostings and our panel here brilliant session as as we anticipated for this session we i think we've got uh many more people online than in the room but um we've got an exciting conversation so it should have been as we know uh tracy braving uh in conversation with andy bernham but we are absolutely delighted that we've got uh john uh robb very uh credible and well known uh journalist and uh real campaign up for uh climate action as well so i'm going to hand straight over now and this session is now tackling the status quo so as well as john and andy we are going to be joined on screen by the sea sorry by the one of our federals the football supporters association who we're working closely with so andy walsh is joining us on the screen as well so over to you john thank you okay thanks rose so um well what's interesting about this panel we're going to start with the football thing and talk about the future of football and is working within the context of the cooperative movement as well which i think is really great you've done a lot of work in this before this is this not a new idea so i guess what was actually let's talk about the work you've done with this before because remember on that tour we did years ago the hills were a tour yes we're going to talk about them that was that round about that time absolutely by giving the fans the control over football again yeah absolutely so i was saying earlier today 20 years ago just over actually we set up supporters direct um and it was at a time when uh obviously people were moving into clubs in the lower divisions dodgy intentions assets being stripped um and it was a movement that we built and it grew really quickly um i think looking back maybe it didn't have enough kind of weight behind it you know with government funding councils but still it made a massive difference and yeah i always kind of felt maybe that the idea of supporter ownership was still something that a certain group of fans kind of felt passionate passionately about but the wider fanbase was a bit like more more skeptical then you bring it right up to date bang up to date european super league 50 plus one became a kind of call didn't it that everyone was buying into the whole because everyone could then feel it and see it then that their club was at risk of this just being kind of ripped out of its community ripped out of its league lose its ground you know no no club safe you know we've got old them athletic supporters with us today you know everyone feels for them in the situation that they're in but it could be any of us you know my club nearly got relegated this year what would have happened then with all of that you know so i think finally the pennies dropped with everybody that clubs are not safe in the current structure of football and therefore what makes club safe supporter community ownership that's the only thing that really guarantees the long-term future of your club and i think the idea has been building over the last 20 years but it's definitely an idea whose time now has fully come i mean andy is here yes hello andy i mean you're an example of this aren't you as somebody who's actually built a club up from the fans support from the grass roots you and a number of people then went with self fc and i it which i was a reluctant convert to at first but i was the general manager for 11 years and we built crowds to over 3 000 over 5 000 members certainly the appetite air of football fans in Manchester and i'm currently working with very fans in rescuing their club after the demise there as well we've got over 40 clubs now across the country at all levels who are fully or majority owned by their supporters and so the movement is growing it does need support from from from policy makers and from people within the game because supporters provided stability that andy just talked about there you know the the launch of supporters direct 20 years ago it was a new concept cooperatives and neutrals were new but in football it was and that that consciousness and awareness of football fans um of what was possible is greater now than it was then you know andy talked about the 50 plus one rule i level when in 98 99 that we were arguing against the Rupert Murdoff take over in Manchester United we were in conversations with Barcelona and Joanne LaPorte who was then a leader of the supporters pressure group Elefanta Blau and approached us and asked us the support for what they were doing and whilst Joanne's tenure as president of Barcelona has not been what we would recognise as a sort of standard supporter ownership model it did join what could be done by supporters um with a proper campaign to actually um have an influence over their football i mean do you see it as a model that works in more grassroots end of football i mean you talk about Barcelona which is obviously the other end of football or do you see it as a future model for all football clubs certainly you know in in football terms managers come and go players come and go owners come and go but the supporters don't supporters are there for the long term and the supporters are there putting money in week after week and for nothing more than the support for their community and their football clubs and football is the biggest expression of community identity that this country has and i think if you if you look at the way that loyalty to the club is exploited by bad actors in the game those bad actors morph year on year into different interventions in the game at the moment we've got we've got crypto as a threat to football you know at a time when crypto has lost a third of its or 70 percent i should say it's only a third of its value that it was last autumn crypto is now moving into football because that's an area where they see being able to exploit their exploit their advantage with the cash that they've got so i think it's further up the leagues clubs and leagues themselves that or football authorities need to involve fans because fans are not just cannon fodder they're the people who provide stability to the game i mean these are very much core values of the corporate movement as well aren't they which so this is why this is a really interesting topic it's kind of populist topic but also kind of chimes work the core values of this kind of congress as well aren't they is that something you're really interested in as well most definitely i think supporters direct is now merged with the football support federation and we are now the football support association and all those support our own clubs and those support our trusts so we're 100 trusts across the professional game where many of them have have a stake in their in their football club what we need now is a review of the policy framework and the legislative framework to ensure that the rights of fans are embedded within the ownership and governance of their football clubs and that's why we're really excited by the conversations we've been having with Andy over the last few weeks about looking at the new political framework we have with with the combined authorities and the powers that they have what can they do what can politicians like Andy and others do to support activists in their community who are looking for mutual ownership of their club or just having a stake in their club and ownership brings with it not just a recognition from the majority owners of the club but also it gives supporters participation rights and empowers them supporters in terms of their own engagement with the club and what they can actually do the participation and their their ownership of the club the ownership of the club brings i mean yeah you're saying what what politicians like you do yeah well i've got massive respect for Andy and everything that he's done to promote supporter ownership of football from the days campaigning against the glazer takeover and and everything since and i it's just brilliant for me to know that what supporters direct built all those years ago is now in his hands work as part of out of the football supporters association so learning from what we've all been through the kind of thought in my mind was well how do we give him more backing when he's talking to Oldham or whoever about taking uh taking a stake because you know we we often do get you know with Barry it was too late that it was when we were asked to get involved the thing was too far gone so what we've got to do is create a support system that is actually an evolution of what we were doing with supporters direct so this is the task force that we're announcing today great to manage the combined authority cooperatives uk football supporters association a tripartite agreement saying we're going to create a support system behind supporters who are trying to take control of their club and obviously Oldham athletic are the club you know this spotlight moves around doesn't it and now it's on Oldham and we want to prove hopefully this new concept with Oldham to say we're going to stand behind them we're not dictating anything by the way it's the the supporters are deciding what they want to do and how they want to do it but we're just the enablers behind them and these three organisations now between us we have some considerable heft between us to sort of back them back them up and you know it's for the long term it's not like a quick fix or you know we're just saying we're going to be there it's not a fair weather thing we'll be behind you and then if it works for Oldham maybe other clubs will step forward and ask for the same support so that's what we're announcing John it's the mayoral combined authority if you like providing the government side of things and obviously co-ops UK and FSA doing the sort of direct front line work so it's basically providing a structure and maybe advice or is there actually more practical things to give to you I mean how do you take over a football club if you're fans I mean how can how can these two guys take over Oldham athletic from a dodgy owner well it's a it's a community benefit society isn't it approach possibly a community share offer and I think Andy's working on those kind of things anyway with with the supporters without I mean it's for Oldham supporters to talk about the detail but here there's a kind of issue about the ground being in different ownership and that might present a good first step if you like to secure to secure the club something that wasn't open to to bury fans so it's about all of those things every club situation will throw up different complexity but it's about having the three partners standing behind to unlock that with with the sport isn't the thing about a democratic organisation and not for profit organisation it's much easier for an organisation like mine to get become an investor in community football than it is if it's you know a direct you know a kind of company that's a bit shady you know and that's why it can give confidence to the public sector to support particularly if we look at boundary park I mean I just put this thought out there but it could be more than a football stadium couldn't it it's got the space around it to be a community cooperative hub actually with football at its heart but that building out the identity of the Oldham community as Andy said you know in this day and age what else speaks to the identity of places more than the football club it does nothing actually and if Oldham athletic was lost it would be a catastrophe for the town and the borough of Oldham a catastrophe and we can't let it happen yeah you're probably like my generation of people that all towns of Britain that I'd ever heard of or football clubs when I was growing up I wouldn't even know his place has existed you know yeah so I knew all the grounds as well did you yeah yeah all of them from the 70s and even backtracking yeah so that idea and I've always liked that idea the football clubs are more than just the football club it's a community hub but also it should be a multi you know a facility place shouldn't it for all different types of activities absolutely and to be fair to them I mean we beat them up at times but a lot of them are I mean you know everyone can have their debates about the ownership of different clubs but you can't dispute the fact that Manchester City have invested quite a lot in East Manchester I mean that is just they have I mean or you look at that my club Everton what they do in the community is is outstanding actually and it's not a fake commitment it's a real commitment and you could there's lots more examples but what what what we could have though is more kind of permanent benefit and more supporter control because all clubs get themselves at times into positions where they're taking decisions that go against the grain of what what the supporters feel and we've got to prevent these these crises happening and put clubs on a much firmer foundation for the for the long run so the minimum would be having supporters representing on boards and the maximum will be having the supporters actually run the I've always had a little bit I don't know how Andy thinks about it because we had these debates 20 or so years ago on the football task force you can't have a token supporter on the board I don't particularly favour that just oh just a fan on the board and that's it it's going to be a supporter with the backing of an ownership stake on the board to you know to be in the room as a as an equal not as a token so I think the ownership is a really important part of it ownership of the core assets the ground that's what I think we should work to a supporters trust owning the ground leasing it to the owners and therefore the therefore the supporters not not the flimsy fits and proper persons test that the the football authorities do or don't apply actually in the case of Alden if Alden's what has owned the ground they would be interviewing the owners who come on because they'd have to lease the ground from them do you see what I mean I mean that is such a sort of strength of position that you can put football supporters in if they're they're the ones who are controlling the asset and they are the ones interviewing the prospective owners and and you know then then football will have its its kind of its its fundamentals in the right place interesting because that chime to the music venue trust campaign for the music venues to actually own the venues as well isn't it so it's the powers and the bricks in the sense absolutely uh I was just talking about music venues critical national infrastructure I called it but I would say the same about uh football grounds across the country and everything that goes on inside them around them uh these are incredible places aren't they of community of togetherness of debate sometimes you know but these these are places uh that that bind us together bind communities together times when you've got very divisive politics going around towns you know the football club is the one place where people coalesce and kind of you know look outwards a bit and you know and you just can't lose that you can't sort of have it on the hanging on the whim of some some so-called savior who's going to come in from where god knows where but gambling with these clubs every time they're sold there's a massive gamble with a proud English name of a proud football club and it's kind of like you know it's it's high stakes isn't it and we've got to take that that out of it and uh you know I just take my hat off to to Andy and every the work he does he does painstaking work because it is painstaking work it's not easy uh but you know I think um with this partnership today maybe we can put some more power behind his elbow and you know get get more progress I mean uh Justin there's a size but another one to look out for is Derby County I heard it might only have two weeks left well I don't know if Elaine is is here today because uh Elaine is heavily heavily involved think she's uh heard enough from me she's gone off to another another meeting but Andy do you know something about the Derby County situation because I think it is pretty critical isn't it liquidation is even being mentioned isn't it it is critical in is that I'm not I'm not closely involved in the Derby County situation my colleague is is working with that but again Derby one of the biggest issues we have is support understanding of the issues and that um that it's it's not so much an education piece but people know what the issues are it's about support understanding what their power is and what their influence they can bring and the situation with Derby would be much better if if it was followed by Andy was saying there about the asset being in the ownership of the community um you know just pick it up um a point you made there John about um about other examples at Bering um the last two owners who came into the club gambled with the club's assets that have been built up over generations this isn't you know they they they come in and buy a club for a for a small amount because the club's in distress but they they recognise these new owners they recognise the value in the bricks and mortar to the extent that they then leverage them for borrowing to bring money in for revenue and that shouldn't be allowed you know they shouldn't be allowed to to leverage the assets that have been built up over generations that have also been built up not just by football fans but the local community and the taxpayer who's given tax breaks through council tax relief or through um HMRC relief football itself generally through grants that's not there to be exploited by private capital that's there as community wealth that's been put in by the broader community not just those with war fans so there's a there's an undeniable argument that these assets should be in the hands of the community and a bit of a warning here to other clubs as well all of them are the first club from the Premier League era to crash out of the professional game into non-league and that's a club that traditionally can command crowds in excess of premiership clubs virtually half the championship clubs it's a warning to the likes of Burnley who've gone down the route of high stakes private capital investment on the basis they're going to stay in the Premier League you know it's it's it's the casino economy on coke it's madness and we need politicians and policy makers to protect those assets from exploitation of private capital and Andy I hope you do everything you can for olden but don't let them bring back that plastic pitch they did all right with the plastic pitch we've got some olden fans as well it'd be good I don't know if yeah I mean we're I mean we've got the mic here yes whereabouts are you what whereabouts up to in the campaign are you so yeah uh yeah good good afternoon everybody I'm paul whited from the olden mathematics sports foundation with me is domlow who's also from the foundation um we're at a fairly early stage I think John um we've had meetings over the last couple of weeks with Andy and Rose and we're beginning the process now uh Andy Burnham alluded to the club it's it's in a difficult position there's no doubt about it we have just dropped out of the football league after 115 years of membership we're owned the club he's owned by an absent owner who hasn't been in the country for months the ground is in separate ownership we are engaging somewhat with the owners of the ground with a view to seeing what we can do about that and we are looking to convert to community benefit society over the next six to eight weeks ideally if we can get our if we can get a move on and then look towards a community share offer which will give us a sizeable amount of money hopefully which we can then invest ideally in the stadium to do again the things that Andy Burnham talked about which is making a community hub again reach out to all sections of the community and I think Oldham have probably failed in that in the past and we see some of the work that Blackburn are doing with with some of the ethnic communities in Blackburn and Oldham has a similar population we need to do more there um we'd like to win a few games we haven't done that for a very long time I'm not sure if Dom's ever seen us win more than half a dozen games a season um but yeah so uh we are at an early stage we thank both Andy's and Rose from co-ops UK for their invaluable support over the last few weeks and we hope to make significant progress over the next couple of months to help us build a stake to bring the club back into local ownership for local people good we know you working with are you working with other clubs at all so we've had a lot of support from across the football community I mean just a recent example um the club announced a friendly with bollwn wanderers bollwn fans um came out in their droves and said our club should not be supporting uh their owner and they managed to get their club who listens to their fans to call off that game so we're not playing that game with them anymore which puts it puts that pressure that public pressure back and puts our owner in the spotlight and we've had that support from across across the country not just locally we've had late in orient fans uh collecting outside wembly for us uh the FA cup um and you know with their help and with the help of uh other football fans old and fans but other old um uh other football fans as well uh we've already raised in donations over 50 000 pounds what about other fan groups because I'm a blackpool fan and we were stuck with probably dod your zone of the whole lot but we found that Liverpool very good spiritually lots of great advice lots of other people what scares his owners more than anything is actually when the cooperative goes on beyond just the fans of one club in cooperative but all the clubs it scares them absolutely yeah and I mean uh Christine said in the rest of the the blackpool uh supports just they've been uh probably our number one supporter uh alongside uh it was six easy points for us but I've been blackpooled young so I know but the solidarity between the fans is what scares him and it which is a core to probably a lot of co-op ideas across not outside football as well I think yeah absolutely I mean we've been uh you know this past season old and fans have been protesting right there next to us late in orient fans other other football fans we recognise the issues the other clubs are having like Darby like Barry are having the past like Rochdale have had recently as well with um you know hostile takeovers uh being mooted we're here it stands shoulder to shoulder with every other football fan who has issues uh we're all different and complex but we're there to support each other whether that's financially or um emotionally or getting out on our feet and protesting or standing next to each other yeah definitely I mean obviously you've been speaking to you've been speaking to Andy haven't you and yeah so I mean what advice have you been giving these guys about what they need to do and I guess another club does well I guess it's different for every club different situations different types of clubs different types of owners but is there a general thing that fans could do is it just basically just organise and agitate or is there more that people can do? I think um I think I'd tell me how after the to the orient fans for the for the way that they've responded in not just expressing their um their oppositions at the way the club has been managed over 20 years really not just the last four or five years of lance again but um they've they've held together you know they've people have held together as a group they've not all been going again because they don't want to give um the current owners the money but they've held together as a group and in in that period of turmoil football's no different anything else Splinter's developed between the supporters of the club and is what we've seen over the last uh few months as fans recognising that despite the differences that they've had in the past over things that have been said or not said or done or not done that they that they need to to have that solidarity that Don talked about there and the discussions we've been having the last few weeks about coming together behind a community benefit society with the opportunity of raising community shares is one of those elements which co-op the co-opsy movement has provided football that wasn't there 10-15 years ago you know I was involved with FC United in the first pilot scheme of community shares and we raised an excessive two million quid for building the grounds in north Manchester and alongside that the fans then put in another million quid in terms of donations and went up all fans and put that kind of cash in the business community and all the grant agreements and the local authority can say okay you've made a commitment we'll back you and that's the message that we've been discussing with Paul and Don over the course of the last few weeks is that if we can come together despite all those past differences this is something a bit bigger now this is about what we can all do together with the co-op movement with the likes of Andy's office and GMCA to get some real cash together we're already talking to local business community about them coming in and supporting us as well for a future for the club and start then to have some conversations with the owner and say look you know bygones be bygones the club is now in a desperate situation it's lowest point as Paul's set for over 100 years what are we going to do if you really care about this group what are we going to do together and then let's let's have a fresh challenge and that money is that money is very achievable if we can raise two million quid xc and i with a fan base of four or five thousand all them can reach out to 20 000 people so the amount of money that they possibly could raise really is disguised as a limit I guess it's a fast learning curve for you guys because basically you just fans you just want to go and watch football don't you but now now you've got to work out to take over a club and run it and but I mean do you have a plan of action apart from an emotional response to the situation or is there like a manifesto or a plan or there is a plan that we've been working on internally for the future of football club and what we want it to look like and that is focused on the team the academy because young players are always going to be important for clubs like ours the facilities of the stadium we've already touched on and the community and those are the four sort of planks of our business plan moving forward we because of the fractured relationship with the owner the one thing we haven't been able to do a great deal about at the moment is put some finances into that business plan because we've no idea what's going on with the finances of the club as it stands we've got statutory accounts but the small company account is telling you virtually nothing so that is the one thing that's missing from our plans at the moment but we've certainly got a plan for all those other elements that we want to bring together for the good of the town the club and the community I mean Andy do you think I mean this has been bumping up for years and it's not just old and we talked about this before there's been other clubs other situations campaigns that you start before organisations started before do you think this is finally the turning point we're getting to I do I feel it is and I think the european super league really was that sort of moment where everyone went you know what the game can't be run like this anymore and everyone did come together at that at that moment so much so that there is legislation on football arriving in the commons fairly fairly soon a regulator not before time but that's an opportunity isn't it that legislation to amend it to expand it to pick up some of the points that Andy was was talking about about before john so no I think we finally have hit the point where the argument is one clubs should be if not wholly owned by supporters certainly supporters should be a major investor in in in clubs I don't think I think in legislation we should have a 50 plus one rule well we should be building to 50 plus one as an ownership that's where we should be going as a country I think so that clubs are majority owned by supporters on that german model that can't be done overnight but what I think you could have is a 50 plus one rule over fundamental decisions affecting the future of the club not being by law having to have 50 plus one of the season ticket holders so that you've got to stop these things building over time haven't you they kind of you know they they I mean Elaine's here now and I don't know whether she wants to say anything about Derby but the trouble is decisions get made in boardrooms that are going to explode on the fans two years down the line and I think you've got to get to a situation where we stop that happening and there's a statutory requirement to have a majority of season ticket holders support when any fundamental changes being made to the ground the league they play in the colours they play and what anything like that so changes coming on yeah and that building parliament the co-op movement is going to have to make a I think we need a big campaign around that legislation when it comes to make sure we get the maximum benefit for football supporters from it so do we have to wait for when Labour will win the next election for this or is it well I think to be fair Tracy Crouch who was the former sports minister and I like Tracy you know and she did a good job with her fan-led review I think most people would probably agree with that what you want to see is that fan-led review coming into the legislation Andy do you agree with that I think I think I think Tracy did do a very good job I think one of the best reports that we've seen but the current state of the of parliament and the economic situation we've still got to maintain the pressure that that legislation is brought to the house and is actually passed and then there's a battle that's been indicated there about what the regulator actually does and as an organisation we're working with the football authorities you know we've been talking to the FA football league and the Premier League about how the fan-led review will be implemented already and the Premier League have responded with talking to us about a new supporter engagement model it's not ownership but it's support engagement model they've recognised that that fan-led review is talking about golden shares and about giving some protection to the to the games key heritage assets. Andy is it realistic Andy to have leveraged buyouts on the kind of basis of Manchester United and Burnley made illegal? I would hope so but I would also I would also say it was Richard Caborn who turned up down at Manchester United so it's we've got and when we when we lobbied to then lay the government to stop the glazing takeover Richard Caborn battered it back over the net and said he was quite happy with what was going on with the glazers and I think that was really because the strength of the support movement then wasn't what it is now you know Paul talked very eloquently before about the solidarity that they've received from support groups that's not organised by others the FSA that's just fan groups recognising common purpose and common aids and coming to the aid of other supporters that wasn't around in 1999 when we were fighting the glazers it is now because more and more supporters are replacing that and that puts pressure on all politicians and I would call on you know the political arm of the co-op movement the co-op party to work with us to help develop policy that then supports those well-being individuals from whichever party they're from who want to see real change to cement the football community in the harder game it gives fans of real voice okay so Derby county then yes Derby county find themselves in a rather a mess at the moment and having extricated ourselves back in 2005 from previous owners we formed a trust in 2002 and then we had previous owners that were really bad they were actually sent to prison um and we thought everything was fine and then we've got a local owner local um millionaire own multimillionaire owner and we thought everything would be fine it didn't turn out to be fine at all um he's taken out loans he's done all sorts of weird financial dealings ending up with being deducted 21 points this season and relegated to league one and we are now in the position that the fixtures are out Monday um and we don't have uh an owner we are in administration facing liquidation um and there is nothing that the fans can do about it the trust are taking um you know taking them to task and trying to hold their sort of feet to the flames but we're not getting very far because there's not a lot you can do when the administrators don't seem to be talking to some of the people who are trying to buy the club so one of those people has now taken out a lawsuit so this is all dragging it on longer and longer and longer and we don't know if we'll have a club next week so they're basically just paralyse it in the courts to stop you taking control is that what they're doing yes well there's there's no way that the trust can take on a club the size of darby county with possibility of debts up to or more than 50 million pounds isn't there's just no way that you can take on that sort of thing and that's how it's built up plus um the owner sold himself the stadium uh so he owns the stadium which is not in administration whereas the club is so they're two separate entities it's the biggest model i think i've ever heard of um and it's something we are fighting for and it's something we're desperately um trying to sort out and trying to take advice um but that just doesn't seem to be anything that the ordinary supporter can do we have gates regularly 30 000 people you know so a club that size going down that's a start if you've got 30 000 people that's an army isn't it so it's it is yeah and and uh hearing what we're saying earlier about um fans turning on one another that that does happen as well when you find yourself in adversity that splinter groups set up and people saying what's you know what's the trust doing what's the trust doing they know use this that this that all they want to see it on the board and it's just not true but we have actually um yesterday managed to get a letter sent to the administrators and the EFA which has been agreed by all the um five main supporter groups and signed by all of us so we're hoping that that has some action but i was very grateful don't know if he is here and out of here he gave me some very good advice um over the weekend about uh how you can approach the business secretary um who has the power to intervene with administrators i didn't know that so that's something we'll probably be um i mentioned it to Andy last night it's something we'll probably be doing um in the next day or so something important there though elaine about administrators isn't they because you know they supposedly come in they were appointed by the the former owner yeah and i understand they're the ones they had at portsmouth they don't seem to be administrating very much who regulates the administrator and if you're on up three million pounds worth of costs that they want to be paid so i mean would you have advice in that situation Andy i mean it's obviously not up to you to say the club but i i just remember with wigan uh because they were in this position you know you think administration can bring you a whole new range of issues um you know and that's you know well darby obviously looking down that barrel a little bit at the moment so i think it's great that elaine's spoken because we i think we need obviously we're rallying round old until i do think we do need to rally around the ram's trust as well at the moment because you know it's pretty dire situation for them i think john if i may just uh just to say there about administrators uh they are one of the problems and the administrators are you know she used to another allergy there the people who were who were sitting there looking after the the financial and collapse of the club the first people they paid for themselves and they take sometimes quite extortionate fees we saw we saw that at berry as well where the administrator there is always going to look after themselves and the lack of regulation yeah a lot of legislation covering administrators is is a real problem we we've made complaints directly to the regulators of uh of insolvency recovery specialists and they've been by the way and you know you look at some of not going into the details here but you look into some of the some of the antics that the administrators made at darby county it's a scandal they've laid more debt on the football club that was there when they took over and they want to keep their fees out of that it's it's very very loose legislation because these people traditionally are looking after companies that are in collapse they're looking to try and salvage something for the creditors and there's a load of bottom feeders around like the likes of steve they took over at berry know know that and they use that again personal private gain at the expense of the wider community so that was great so um okay so part part what we're talking about here is we're doing a football but also extrapolating these ideas out because I think with football you can actually see how dodgy the owners of most big business are that often psychopaths that often greedy um co-op with the movement to bring things up for the grassroots or something I've always really believed in and really loved and things so and you're working a lot different areas with the co-op thing so he got the carbon co-op manager a co-op commission and also carbon co-op here I think yeah oh yeah and beyond the music as well and the music institute as well so we've got about 10 minutes if you can just sort of explain what your connection and what the ideas behind those are yeah I mean these are obviously all different parts of the great Manchester world that matter hugely to people we talked about care today we talked about football we talked about music the big challenge of of people's homes making them affordable warm you know is is a massive challenge as we rise the climate challenge and I think the co-op movement has a big role there that you know the cost of living crisis actually big a big a big role and the other carbon co-op are brilliant actually the thing I would say to everybody um with regard to how we move from the kind of the models we've lived under because you go through all of these things football music care the common denominator is the mantra that the market solves everything has been comprehensively disproved by the last 30 years in all of those sectors it's left us with a nightmare isn't it you know where we haven't got these things that matters so much to us in a place where they're secure and so therefore you know tackling the status quo this session is it I think we have to really start to sort of talk about I can entirely new sort of approach to things devolution of power out of Westminster empowers the co-operative movement I think everyone really needs to get behind this notion because it is about then power flowing the other way than way it's traditionally flown in this country where Westminster subject to the lobbying of big business privatisation deregulation that's what that system has delivered isn't it and it has on the ground it's caused chaos it's caused a situation where homes are not safe for people the cladding crisis killed people Grenfell five years this week it's created a situation where buses are unaffordable to people you've got a deregulated bus system and I think this is the change that we now need we need to kind of absolutely rule out this notion that the market solves everything it doesn't we've ended up with a derby county economy we are a derby county economy all respect to Elaine but yeah that's not a great great statement right now but devolving not just to the regions but devolving to the people devolving to the people in this room getting to go to make things work that's the point I mean you know it's to be proven yet whether this thing we're announcing today will work but I am trying to get some of the devolve power I have behind Oldham Athletic that's that's what we're trying to do not to take over what we're not to tell them what to do but then just to stand behind them that's the point of what devolve power and funding can can do and I have come to the view that we need well we need just wholesale change don't we in terms of the way these things are being done energy will be another one wouldn't it you know put energy systems in the hands of local people so that they can protect themselves from the you know the profiteering that that goes on and the kind of the the anxiety that's caused by rising energy prices these are the things that we need to we need to do going forward and you know the co-op movement obviously has what we can often say its time has come but I think it post pandemic its time has really really come and we can't sit back and wait you've got to shake the future now ourselves and I would say that the mayor will combine authorities and the co-operative community in every area is a potent combination if we can get them absolutely aligned and pushing in the same direction for me it's a 19th century just revolution idea that makes more sense in the 21st century this is a time for the co-op movement you know yeah I but let's just be honest though I think I am talking about wholesale political reform because the country is hardwired to favour vested interests against the wider public interest and that is my experience of 16 years in Westminster you concentrate power in a small number of hands in Westminster you create the opportunity for the media to manipulate that power in the interests of big vested vested interest the status quo that's that and this is what this session is about so I think we need to rewire the country basically if you're to get power out of there and into the hands of people who are able then to protect what matters to them to support people with their homes and their energy bills so I mean I am some ways a bit of a late convert to this but I am now fully in favour of proportional representation for the for the commons I think the Lord should become a senate of the nations and regions and out of that reformed parliament I think you have to have maximum devolution of power to all parts of the country and resources so that communities can rebuild their own their own worlds their own places you know why do we put up anymore with anonymous care companies extracting money out of care commissioning as we were hearing before and leaving vulnerable people within our communities without the basic support why are we putting up with that model anymore you know and I think you've got to rewire the country I think to allow a different model to to take shape we're kind of nibbling at it at the moment but I think you've got to take a decisive step to to the powers going to flow differently around the country and the more the power flows out of Westminster and interlocal communities the more you empower supporters trust at the grassroots level or care co-ops or carbon co-ops and I think we're going to hear from the yeah I mean the context of that which retease up very nicely to what the carbon co-ops do I think yeah I think there's a few things there and I think the overall message is how well uh cooperatives can play with the devolved local authorities and give you one example the cost of living crisis at the moment everyone's fuel bills are going through the roof okay fantastic we need to do something about that uh what's the response from government well it's to give tax breaks to oil companies in the North Sea it's to and also deregulation yeah no they were saying let's have a deregulation drive to solve the cost of living crisis yeah well what's the one thing we know that will reduce people's bills forever it's insulating their homes retrofit in their homes and the the uh bays the business secretary the treasury are just silent on it they don't want to say anything about it we can speculate why that is but then we have people like Andy at a local level they were putting it out there and saying no we need to do this we need to retrofit homes it's for the good of the people it builds local supply chains local economies it tackles the environment as well and that and that political leadership is just absolutely absent um at the national scale from Westminster at the moment and as cooperatives working at a local level building these new businesses helping people in their homes we need that we need that kind of leadership because from that flows action from that flows funding and and the right kind of environment and the regulatory environment to do that can't we just do it without them you know let's just do it all grassroots i think that that's one of the messages of cooperatives like we are doing that you know we we carbon copy and going for more than 10 years now and we're doing stuff all over greater Manchester and beyond but to achieve that kind of scale that we know is necessary there are 1.2 million homes in greater Manchester the vast majority of them need some kind of intervention some of them quite quite major really we're never going to achieve that on our own but we can by working with combined authorities by working with other other people are out there working together in you know incorporation so in context of the cooperative movement how how good is that for you know the zero carbon and those kind of futures is to the two tally does it make that your job your work easier in terms of like no in the cooperative movement and i mean is that something that facilitates it makes it easier get some message out people get organised yeah i mean one of the things we know is like the kind of changes we're going to make to our homes and to our communities and energy systems they're going to need quite big changes they're going to be different ways in which we use energy and what have you we need that consent and that legitimacy to make those changes we need the involvement of people in that process i think it is very similar to football clubs it can't be a thing of like we've talked to people we've consulted them and they're happy with it they have to be involved they have to be involved in the ownership and the control of these kind of systems retrofit is something we do a lot of here we're going to go into people's homes we we can make some quite large scale changes it might cost quite a bit of money to do that sort of thing now the households need to trust us they need to think all right yeah i trust these guys to come in and do stuff and the fact that we're not for profit but that we're owned by members and that our members are the people that we're working for that's integral to that and that's why we're doing retrofit at the moment when quite a lot of the the private sector they're not doing anything you know i think this is the thing i was just trying to get over before you know co-ops thrive in a crisis don't they and we're in a national crisis cost of living but climate you know energy there's on old fronts isn't it at the moment you know things are collapsing aren't they things are breaking down in front of us leaving people exposed to costs that they can't afford and you know so we're in a we're in a crisis so that's why i say it's the moment for the cooperative movement because you could solve the crisis by more of the same and the government will try and do that but actually it's the crisis and the climate imperative combined say something fundamentally different is needed than what we've done before because you know we're not going to get the fairness into this actually you've got to kind of think of climate justice social justice one on the same thing if you're going to make homes buildings transport energy systems green it's a chance to change them but to change them in the public benefit not in the again replicating the the issues that we've we've had so you see what i mean i mean this is why this is such a moment actually to to bring through a whole new whole new paradigm really in terms of how we create wealth in communities create good jobs through retrofitting it's about the crisis we're in and the the climate crisis coming and then saying right business as usual is not going to solve either of those things so therefore the new thing comes in and takes its takes its place this is the moment this is the moment i think it's actually even though everything's in a really terrible situation there's actually a positive take from this because we can actually everything sorted out i think so i think i'm going to be saying more about this in the coming days but i think we need a big change of direction for the country now in this in this period that we're in we cannot carry on on the same path of doing the same things and while the government i was in did lots of good things i i i am sad that it kind of continued the sort of deregulation sort of the competitive tendering that we were talking about before and the fragmentation of public services it should and it did many good things and i'm proud of many things it did but actually it kind of carried a direction on that was going through the 80s 90s and i think we've hit a point here where the evidence is absolutely right there in front of us deregulation does not work privatisation of public services does not work if you if you leave the private sector in control of of homes and retrofitting it won't happen at the speed that we need for the for the climate crisis you won't get public transport that people can afford look at the cost of trains you know what people are paid to get here today cost of buses it's not working for people it's it's damaging people's lives so a whole new model is needed and i don't know you know whether that's too ambitious but it feels to me that you know we need to get a kind of new consensus around around this that it can't be more of the same well go on it's well it can't be more that's why i'm putting these ideas out there it can't be more of the same yeah you say yeah well um the government are currently consulting on how we use and manage our energy systems in the future to be more flexible to allow more generation on them and they're saying okay we're going to create a market how do you think our market should be run and the the obvious response is look at the energy supply market it's it's not working you know dozens of companies have gone bust companies that came into the market to make a quick book and found out well they couldn't when things changed and to say and then also to say with energy efficiency energy companies are mandated to spend a portion of the money that they earn on energy efficiency now they've dropped off the cliff that market isn't working those markets aren't working so for the regulators and for the government to say oh what new markets should we come up with it's just fantasy to me like you know i think we're not we're not processed enough yet what we've all lived through in the last two years what we saw laid bare when the tide went out in march 2020 we could see the seabed of this country more clearly than we'd ever seen it before couldn't we and what we saw was millions of people in jobs so insecure that when they were ill they couldn't go home and hence covid took a hold in some of the most well the least affluent parts of our of our country and that and they were going home to homes in the private rented sector that were not fit for human habitation that were damaging to their health that is what it revealed that is where we've got to with the way we've been running things you know that that model of leaving people working hour to hour to try and make things work with no security in their life whatsoever worrying themselves to sleep every night in a home that's beneath the decent home standard because the landlord's under barely any regulatory pressure to to maintain the condition of their property that is the state of things and having no power and the pandemic revealed it and what are we going to do about it and having no power of their lives which i find the co-op thing is great because it empowers people to take responsibility for their own lives takes power off politicians which is great and i fully advocate that having worked with a lot of them over the years Michael thank you and you used to be giving him the death's day when it's time to finish talking just now i was just getting going there could be having this conversation for at least another few hours but you have got lunch now for an hour before we get into the climate and ecology Bill we've got to judge Mcgavin and the cooperative bank we've got sessions with young people we've got markets in the mark we have got a discussion about taking a stake in the cooperative bank and Ian Adelaide Elaine is still around he's doing an fca guidance on community benefit societies and the rules that we need to change to empower and enable this so you've got an hour before you need to be in your next sessions but before we do that can we thank today an incredible conversation from John Robb Andy Bird and Paul Darm and Jonathan and Andy Walsh thank you Andy as well welcome I'm brilliant for those of you in the room and he's still here one of the things the themes