social enterprise

Co-op Group Somerfield disposals; an idea

Jock — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:12:45 +0100

Up and down the country local authorities, independent retailers and residents complain that rents are squeezing out interesting independent retailers and creating "Clone Town Britain".

Well, I have an idea. This week the Co-operative Group agreed terms to acquire Somerfield supermarkets. There are some, say management, which directly compete with existing Co-op shops and so one or other may be up for sale. One of these is in Headington in Oxford where there is a fairly recently refurbished MidCounties Co-op store on one side of the road and a Somerfield on the other.

Some people are all excited that someone like Waitrose might step up and buy it - and in a sense there could be no better buyer as far as the Co-op goes - the other end of the market and a sort of a worker co-operative in its own right.

But as I was in a social enterprise meeting earlier today my mind wandered to Headington supermarkets (!) and I wondered if, given it is the Co-operative who have bought them, there might be mileage in proposing a sale to a more local group - perhaps a permanent base for an indoor/farmers' market, or a space which, like the Covered Market in town, could provide "protected space" for independent retailers we wanted to see revived in Headington, set up say as a secondary co-op or a community land trust type structure (or even bought by MidCounties from Co-op Group) enabling local people a say in its management, policies and ownership.

It would require some work of course actually to work out whether the relatively recent decline of independent fresh food retailers in Headington for example has been, as often claimed, because of rent and rates issues where such a facility might be able to help by lowering the cost of access. But if it does seem viable would it be worth trying?

Or would Waitrose or Sainsbury still be a more attractive offering?

localism, mutualism

Oxford Business Improvement District rejected

Jock — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:38:58 +0100

It comes as little surprise to me personally that businesses in Oxford City Centre have voted not to pay an extra one per cent on their rates to create a "Business Improvement District":

Oxford and Oxfordshire news, "Business bid is rejected"

Traders have rejected plans to create a Business Improvement District in Oxford city centre.

The move, by city centre management company OX1, would have meant businesses having to cough up an extra one per cent on top of their business rates in exchange for services such as deep cleaning of the streets and a patrol of street wardens.

Out of 356 votes cast, 56 per cent rejected the proposal. Forty-one per cent of those eligible to vote did so.

And who can blame them when the basic standard of cleanliness in the city centre is currently appalling. Here's a photo I took on Saturday of an overflowing and hanging off bin attached to one of their £30,000 benches. Every other bin I saw in the city was full and many were overflowing, but that was the worst. This was early afternoon on a Saturday, the main shopping day, in a city that attracts millions of visitors a year and the place is heaving on a Saturday.

But when I was on the council, and was involved in economic development when the OX1 City Centre Management Company was established, I wanted it to be more wide-ranging than just the "corporateization" of the city centre. I wanted to create a multi-membership co-operative type organization that would involve the users of the city centre as well as the businesses and other stakeholders such as landowners.

Something does need to be done about the city centre, especially the area that will be economically depressed when the new Westgate Centre opens up attracting more and more people to the western end of the city. Although the city council are also landowners of the Westgate Centre, or most of it at least, they also own a significant number of business premises, including the Covered Market and shops in both the High and the Broad, in this eastern end of the city centre. They need to get together with the other landowners in that end of town and ensure that it remains an economically attractive place to do business.

But in the meantime I shall be writing to Mr O'Dell about my idea presently. read more »

Never say never again?

Jock — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:08:37 +0100

I feel I've been tagged in a strange sort of a meme for my thoughts on Oxford's recent local election results by Antonia [From Oxford elections round-up]:

We await with bated breath the thoughts of Stephen Tall, no longer Lib Dem councillor for Headington, his colleague David Rundle, and the third-placed Lib Dem candidate for Headington Hill and prolific blogger, Jock Coats.

Well thanks, she just had to rub it in by mentioning that third place. I am embarrassed and humiliated to have come third. There are of course official post mortems to come yet on the campaign, but whatever their verdict, one simple fact is that I am a "bad candidate". Whatever fresh ideas I may have brought to the council (and I doubt my Labour victor will be doing much of that, sad to say), I cannot escape the fact that I hate knocking on strangers to talk politics with them. So for me, the literature and word of mouth amongst people who have met me outside that context is more crucial than for most. Such glad-handing ought to have happened long before the campaign proper started with voter ID canvassing in late March. And been followed up with a leaflet introducing me properly and extolling my virtues before the cross city campaign started with its more party led focus on whole city issues.

Then there was "that leaflet." On the last weekend of the campaign I had the dubious honour of having a Labour leaflet, apparently partly delivered by Mrs Dromey (I rather hope, Antonia, that you were unaware of that leaflet's existence when we exchanged pleasantries on the Friday evening), using quotes from this blog about drugs policy obviously intended to give the impression that if I won I would probably be found standing outside the primary school handing out various narcotics to the year sevens, or perhaps to their parents! Several opponents have commented that they thought it was one of the worst personal attack leaflets they had seen. I suppose I ought to feel flattered that Labour were sufficiently alarmed by my candidacy to feel the need to drag the contest into the gutter.

You can read it for yourself here. By my reckoning, it at least breaches copyright law (my moral right not to have my copyrighted work treated in a derogatory fashion or in a way designed to be prejudicial to the honour or reputation of the author or director), if not possibly electoral law. Enquiries are ongoing. I am not a sore loser, but I was upset by it. I know it cost me both votes and reputation, even amongst my deliverers.

Anyway, enough of the campaign itself. Will I ever try again? I don't know. For many years, since in fact I was last on the council in 2002, I have wondered whether the present system of local government is fit for purpose. As an ideological descendent of the individualist-anarchists and a mutualist, I find the state, in all its guises, terribly coercive. I believe sovereignty should lie with the individual and he or she should only cede power upwards to representatives over things that they cannot arrange for themselves or in small groups or local communities. Local government is so tied down by Whitehall and Westminster that the current arrangements simply cannot be responsive enough to local peoples' needs.

The main reason I wanted to be on the council was to continue to promote, from the inside as it were, my mutualist agenda of hiving local authority functions off onto social, community led partnerships. The more things compete for the crumbs of council budgets within the tight control of Whitehall oversight the less satisfactory the outcome. Leisure services for example cannot hope to compete in quality at least with private providers while it is within the constraints of council budgeting. Similarly, whilst more difficult, I think the solutions to our housing problems are community led, rather than council, landowner and planning led.

Every time I've lost so far I've come out of the contest wanting to do other things that will make a difference one day outside the council structure. Almost as if to prove we can cope without the psychopaths who are so good at saying the right thing at the right time to get themselves elected. This time it is to continue to promote the social enterprise "alternative" for producing social and public goods and to work on promoting local community e-democracy.

It will be interesting to watch Labour finally explain where they think there is a "£5m cash crisis" at the city council - reading the latest annual accounts I cannot see it myself. But there's another argument for local government reform - despite us being the tax payer/employers their finances are even more opaque than any company's I've ever seen.

It will be fun to see Maureen Christian defend the Northway Playing fields from something or other she seems to think threatens them (certainly the only "threat" i heard was my own idea to see if we could fit a cricket square on there by budging up the two football pitches and see if we could get a local cricket team going).

I think it will be a retrograde step if Labour succeed in removing planning decisions from area committees. They were not perfect there, but I have always maintained that was as a result of the bad legal advice that both sides in any disputed application had the right only to speak for five minutes each - where they have open discussion at area committees they manage to get better decisions and more fruitful interplay between applicant and objectors and a better outcome for both.

It will also be interesting to see whether the Tories, who, despite not winning a single seat managed to come in second in many wards, and at least the ones in which they tried to put up a full campaign, will be able to keep up that level of work, for example, next year, when their declining reputation in control of the county is up for defending.

And it will be interesting to see whether this marks the high water point for the IWCA, who lost two of their councillors.

But I also don't really expect the city council, under any party, to set Oxford on fire with bright new ideas that will markedly change the quality of life for its citizens.

Finally, if anyone has any ideas about what little thank you gifts I can get for two teenaged Muslim boys who managed throughout to deliver most of the half of the ward for which we did not have regular deliverers - not a happy situation to be in at the start of a campaign and one of the first things I hope to put right for next time - I'd be very grateful to hear them! Their father has resisted all my requests for his advice so far! read more »

New directorship

Jock — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:29:12 +0100

I seem to collect these. Why can't I find a few that pay though! I have just been elected a director of the SE² Partnership Limited (Social Enterprise South East) which takes over from a SEEDA funded project supporting and promoting social enterprise in the South East region. read more »

Bread-heads and social enterprises

Jock — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:48:06 +0000

I've just been watching some old editions of the Dragons' Den on the "Dave" channel. They've just had on a woman who was running a company making and selling little carry cases for fresh fruit for kids. A good enough idea I'd have thought.

But the Dragons seemed to be completely flummoxed by her business model. She was trying to get investment in return for a five per cent stake in the company. Currently the company gives all of its net profit to charities. The proposal was that the company would give 5% of its future profit to the investor and 95% to charity. They could not get their heads round this.

Understand this - a social enterprise is not itself a charity (usually). It is a trading business that has to make money. It so happens that it decides, or is even set up legally in some cases, to distribute or reinvest that profit for social ends rather than simply to whoever owns the company. If it takes in investors, sure, they get an equity stake and the profit apportionable to their equity stake is distributed to them.

Where's the beef? What is there not to understand?

There were other objections - one Dragon thought he would never be able to sit on the board of a company in good conscience where the other members were deciding what charities to donate all their profit to while he was going to walk out with his five per cent in his back pocket. It's certainly an issue - but perhaps he could have thought that without his investment the company would have far less to give away to its charities. Another said she quibbled with the valuation the owners put on it, but she didn't want to argue with them because likewise, she'd be talking down the amount distributed to charities.

But in principle, I don't see the problem if there's a decent valuation, and the investment could clearly make a difference to future profitability, and the investor gets his or her fair share of profits out the other end, why a capitalist cannot invest in a social enterprise if that's what the enterprise has decided would be the right way for them to raise new capital.

I normally quite respect these Dragons. On this, I'm afraid I just thought they displayed a big lack of understanding - most of them were twittering on about it being more efficient for them to give directly to charity and the charity get the tax breaks. read more »