CCIN Brand guidelines
- February 2025
Tackling Barriers to Building a Cooperative Economy
- 3rd Feb 2025
As the title of this Policy Lab might imply, we currently don’t really have a “Cooperative Economy” in the UK: we have lots of
co‑operatives operating mainly as islands within an otherwise competitive and largely profit-driven economy, where their influence is marginal
We understand the term “Cooperative Economy” to denote something different from the mainstream economy. It is where people and organisations work together in a way which is guided by some shared values and principles which challenge the traditional competitive and financially driven approach. But it has to exist within the mainstream economy, and over time to influence it.
The ultimate aim is the happiness and wellbeing of all, not the private benefit of some. More specifically, it means people and organisations conducting their affairs differently, with everybody in mind, including future generations. Seeking to register lots of new cooperatives has (crudely) been the approach of recent years; it hasn’t worked. The desired outcome needs a different approach.
This Policy Lab poses three basic questions (or “lines of enquiry”) set out below, which need to be considered first to understand why we are where we are. We contend that the failure to provide good answer to these questions over recent decades has played an important part in the limited progress made in building a UK Cooperative Economy.
Providing better answers to those three questions is important, as it will be helpful in identifying the barriers that need to be overcome. But even more importantly, naming the real problems is essential if our collective ambition – building a UK Cooperative Economy – is to be delivered.
