There is quite a new tranche of Town Councillors at Sidmouth:
Futures Forum: BREAKING NEWS: Sidmouth shake-up
Tomorrow, Monday 20th May, they will be joining colleagues for the Annual Town Meeting - at which chair and committees will be voted in:
Agenda_STCAnnual-200519.pdf
The Town Council is responsible for quite a lot:
Including a substantial budget of over £0.5m:
Sidmouth Town Council agrees 4 per cent precept increase, a part of council tax, that will help pay for projects including swimming platform | Latest Sidmouth and Ottery News - Sidmouth Herald
Grants galore for good causes thanks to Sidmouth Town Council | Latest Sidmouth and Ottery News - Sidmouth Herald
It supports important services:
Hop on! Sidmouth Hopper Bus reveals new routes and extra days for 2019 | Latest Sidmouth and Ottery News - Sidmouth Herald
It has a key role in determining planning decisions, for example:
Town council support demolition of Sidmouth's St John Ambulance Hall for smart apartments | Latest Sidmouth and Ottery News - Sidmouth Herald
And is part of the Beach Management Plan's steering group:
The plan to protect Sidmouth’s crumbling cliffs is set to be finalised - Devon Live
It has taken the initiative over key issues:
Vision to make Sidmouth first mental health friendly town | Latest Sidmouth and Ottery News - Sidmouth Herald
And it's taking on more responsibilities:
Knowle parkland in Sidmouth could transfer to council by autumn | Latest Sidmouth and Ottery News - Sidmouth Herald
There are new challenges and opportunities - as highlighted on the VGS news pages:
Money available for Historic High Streets - Vision Group for Sidmouth
And there will indeed be money issues:
LocalGov.co.uk - Your authority on UK local government - Council governance systems ‘inadequate’ for austerity era
More freedom urged over councils’ finances | Public Finance
Financial control needs to be devolved from Westminster | Public Finance
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... A FORUM TO STIMULATE DEBATE ... ... JUST ADD A COMMENT AT ANY ENTRY BELOW... ... FOR THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF TOWN AND VALLEY ...
Showing posts with label localism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label localism. Show all posts
Sunday, 19 May 2019
Monday, 22 April 2019
Sid Valley Neighbourhood Plan > Town Council to set up a Community Action Coordination Group
The Sid Valley Neighbourhood Plan has been formally submitted:
A NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN FOR THE SID VALLEY 2018-2032 - Submission Version
And is now with the Examiner:
Futures Forum: Sid Valley Neighbourhood Plan > unanimously endorsed by District Council > consultation ends 8th March > Examiner appointed
Looking ahead, hopefully once the Examiner is satisfied and the plan is voted through by the residents of the Sid Valley, the next stage would be to look at the Community Actions:
Futures Forum: Sid Valley Neighbourhood Plan: "the next phase of its contribution" >>> community actions
And the Town Council has just shown its commitment to the process of ensuring that the Community Actions happen:
SIDMOUTH TOWN COUNCIL
Minutes of the Meeting of Sidmouth Town Council held at the Council Chamber, Woolcombe House, Sidmouth, on Monday 8 April 2019 at 6.30pm
Neighbourhood Plan Community Actions
Members were asked to consider the discussions and recommendations from an informal joint meeting of the Council and Sid Valley Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group regarding the Neighbourhood Plan Community Actions.
RESOLVED: that
1. following Local Government Elections in May 2019, the Council sets up a Community Action Coordination Group, to help facilitate the implementation of Neighbourhood Plan Community Actions;
2. the steering group to consist of Councillors alongside a number of volunteers (in a similar model to the NHP Steering Group) and report progress to full Council quarterly;
3. the Council’s Committees and Working Groups champion relevant Community Actions as appropriate.
Mins-STC-080419.pdf
The Vision Group hopes to help with that stage:
Futures Forum: Help shape the positive development of our community > get in touch with the Vision Group!
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A NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN FOR THE SID VALLEY 2018-2032 - Submission Version
And is now with the Examiner:
Futures Forum: Sid Valley Neighbourhood Plan > unanimously endorsed by District Council > consultation ends 8th March > Examiner appointed
Looking ahead, hopefully once the Examiner is satisfied and the plan is voted through by the residents of the Sid Valley, the next stage would be to look at the Community Actions:
Futures Forum: Sid Valley Neighbourhood Plan: "the next phase of its contribution" >>> community actions
And the Town Council has just shown its commitment to the process of ensuring that the Community Actions happen:
SIDMOUTH TOWN COUNCIL
Minutes of the Meeting of Sidmouth Town Council held at the Council Chamber, Woolcombe House, Sidmouth, on Monday 8 April 2019 at 6.30pm
Neighbourhood Plan Community Actions
Members were asked to consider the discussions and recommendations from an informal joint meeting of the Council and Sid Valley Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group regarding the Neighbourhood Plan Community Actions.
RESOLVED: that
1. following Local Government Elections in May 2019, the Council sets up a Community Action Coordination Group, to help facilitate the implementation of Neighbourhood Plan Community Actions;
2. the steering group to consist of Councillors alongside a number of volunteers (in a similar model to the NHP Steering Group) and report progress to full Council quarterly;
3. the Council’s Committees and Working Groups champion relevant Community Actions as appropriate.
Mins-STC-080419.pdf
The Vision Group hopes to help with that stage:
Futures Forum: Help shape the positive development of our community > get in touch with the Vision Group!
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Sunday, 14 April 2019
How to start a food revolution > revitalizing local food culture by fostering local agriculture, encouraging environmentally friendly production, and turning consumers into co-producers
Today's edition of the Food Programme on Radio 4 took us to Scandinavia, where there's been a food revolution:
BBC Radio 4 - The Food Programme, How to Start a Food Revolution: The Food Adventures of Claus Meyer
Here he is talking about the 'Nordic Food Revolution':
Claus Meyer, Owner of The Meyers Group: The Nordic Food Revolution
Unfolding the potential of indigenous food cultures: Claus Meyer at TEDxCopenhagen 2012 - YouTube
Meyer knew he had to be political in order to effect real change: “To make a real cultural transformation I had to have stakeholders." So he contacted all the biggest chefs in Scandinavia, key figures in the food industry and politicians.
Working with fourteen chefs he developed the New Nordic Food Manifesto. It urges sustainability, seasonal cooking, the use of more vegetables as well as indigenous and local foods, sound animal welfare and a focus on health. It was a smart move.
"The manifesto was vague," he explains. "That way everyone would get on board and work towards change. And that change had to start with a great restaurant cooking with the food of our landscape. We had to show that beetroot could be as luxurious as truffles, that you can make a vinaigrette with buttermilk. Hundreds of restaurants took something from Noma. They realised they didn’t need to make beurre blanc or Hollandaise sauce, that there were things we could do with indigenous ingredients." There were Nordic culinary traditions – smoking, fermenting, curing – that could be built on and explored.
Meyer has been criticised for his ‘top-down’ approach, but all these years later he has had an effect, and not just in high-end dining. There is much more demand for Nordic produce in Denmark; cooking is now more vegetable-centric and sustainability very much to the fore.
Food lovers flock to eat the ‘new Nordic’ food that’s cooked in restaurants all over Scandinavia (so the tourist boards and politicians are happy) but the reach of Meyer and Redzepi has gone beyond their own back yard. There are Nordic-inspired restaurants with wooden tables, stoneware ceramics, ‘ferments’, minimalist menu speak ("beet, ash, liquorice") everywhere, from Volt in Stockholm to Septime in Paris and Lyle’s in London.
Meyer, putting food and philanthropy together, set up Gustu in Bolivia in 2013, where two Danish chefs are trying to create a kind of Andean Noma, using ingredients that are indigenous to the region while employing and training marginalized youth.
Meyer admits that his connection to Noma – he has now sold most of his share in it – has had disadvantages as well as advantages.
"People confuse the Manifesto with what Rene is doing. Rene has just taken the tenets of it. They think the manifesto laid down laws - like you can’t use tomatoes in a Nordic kitchen - but that wasn’t the case. That was something that they followed at Noma, but that was their decision - Rene’s. He is doing his own thing."
The home kitchen is what Meyer is focusing on right now, which, of course, is the whole point. If you ever wondered what the New Nordic Food Manifesto means when you’re cooking for your family, it’s in The Nordic Kitchen, his book of seasonal Scandinavian dishes. Mussel soup with barley and wild garlic, roast chicken with rhubarb: there’s no cheap bacon or marge here.
In Denmark, where they published a longer version, the book has become a culinary bible. "People use it every day," Meyer says. He smiles with pride. He is restless, a serial entrepreneur, driven, ambitious (he is about to open his first restaurant and a food hall in New York) a wealthy celebrity in a country that values humility so, despite the social programmes, he does get criticised.
But it’s hard to resent the joy he takes in what he’s achieved. No, not everyone in Scandinavia is eating mounds of vegetables they’ve dug up that morning, or fermenting their own Nordic miso. But Meyer knows what he’s done.
"A large number of important people, opinion formers with influence on people’s lives, have come to believe that the values in the New Nordic Cuisine Manifesto aren’t a trend, that they’re now the new normal. Change takes time. But I think we’ve made a good start."
How many of us can say that?
Meet the man behind the Nordic food revolution
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How to Start a Food Revolution: The Food Adventures of Claus Meyer
BBC Radio 4 - The Food Programme, How to Start a Food Revolution: The Food Adventures of Claus Meyer
Here he is talking about the 'Nordic Food Revolution':
Claus Meyer, Owner of The Meyers Group: The Nordic Food Revolution
In this wonderful, personal and thought provoking talk the Danish gastronomic entrepreneur Claus Meyer shares his dream about revitalizing local food culture by fostering local agriculture, encouraging environmentally friendly production, and turning consumers into co-producers. Claus Meyer addresses the global challenge on how we can revitalize local foods.
Claus Meyer - The Nordic Food Revolution - YouTube
He has been all over the world:
Cooking up a revolution: The chef who wants to change the world | brunch | feature | Hindustan Times
Including Newport in Wales:
Top class speakers unveiled for Wales’s premier international food conference - Wales 247
He's doing great things in New York:
Brownsville Community Culinary Center
is committed to offering healthy, accessible cuisine to neighborhood residents through our eatery.
Claus Meyer - The Nordic Food Revolution - YouTube
He has been all over the world:
Cooking up a revolution: The chef who wants to change the world | brunch | feature | Hindustan Times
Including Newport in Wales:
Top class speakers unveiled for Wales’s premier international food conference - Wales 247
He's doing great things in New York:
Brownsville Community Culinary Center
is committed to offering healthy, accessible cuisine to neighborhood residents through our eatery.
The Foundation’s work is focused on the following areas:
to drive social change and to combat poverty through initiatives related to food and hospitality;
to use education in food and cooking and culinary craft as instruments to inspire people to pursue careers in hospitality and the culinary arts; and
to break picky eating habits of children and, from an early age, strengthen their ability to influence sustainable and healthy food choices.
Community – Agern Restaurant
And there is a manifesto:
The New Nordic Food Manifesto | Nordic cooperation
New Nordic Food |
New Danish cuisine - Wikipedia
Here's a piece from the Telegraph from a couple of years ago:
to drive social change and to combat poverty through initiatives related to food and hospitality;
to use education in food and cooking and culinary craft as instruments to inspire people to pursue careers in hospitality and the culinary arts; and
to break picky eating habits of children and, from an early age, strengthen their ability to influence sustainable and healthy food choices.
Community – Agern Restaurant
And there is a manifesto:
The New Nordic Food Manifesto | Nordic cooperation
New Nordic Food |
New Danish cuisine - Wikipedia
Here's a piece from the Telegraph from a couple of years ago:
Meet Noma founder Claus Meyer: the man behind the Nordic food revolution
Diana Henry, cookery journalist of the year
Diana Henry, cookery journalist of the year
25 APRIL 2016
Claus Meyer represents all that is good about Nordic living. He’s just got off a plane but looks as if he’s been for a walk on some wild beach. He is glowingly healthy, tall and energetic.
A fifty-year-old French man of a similar level of success - Meyer runs an empire that encompasses hotels, restaurants, bakeries, delis and a charitable foundation – would be suave and formal. But Meyer - sporting jeans, All Stars and a crumpled but expensive cotton jacket – bounds into the room with the warmth of a Labrador and smiles broadly.
It’s possible you won’t have heard of him – Rene Redzepi, with whom he set up Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant which has grabbed the top slot on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list more than once – gets much more attention, but Meyer has brought about a revolution in Nordic food of which Noma is only a part.
The reasons for his dedication to improving the food of his country are obvious and painful, though he offers them without self-pity.
“I was a very unhappy child,” he says simply. “My mum and dad fought all the time and we ate food from the microwave. The vegetables were frozen and had been cooked a decade before in Eastern Europe. Everything was cheap, and most of it was dipped in melted margarine. People in Denmark believed it was a sin to put much time into cooking or into exploring the pleasures of eating. It was because of the Puritanism handed down from the past. I would say that ninety percent of the kids growing up in Denmark in the 1970s ate like I did."
This arid culinary landscape was also due, he believes, to the industrialisation of food production. "Denmark developed big cooperatives. These inhibited the kind of diversity you get in Italy and France.
"And in Denmark we gave ourselves the worst food, we had what was left after everything else had been exported. Never in the history of Denmark was there education about food."
His parents separated when he was fourteen. His father, who he says never loved him, left, and his mother became an alcoholic. Meyer went to France to work as an au-pair in his late teens and ended up living with a fourth generation baker and traiteur and his family in Gascony. It changed him for ever.
"In France I tasted food that could have been from another planet. Besides the flavours I saw a different way of life too, a capacity for enjoying the moment. That trip to France was huge for me."
Meyer was very overweight when he arrived in France, but there, as he puts it, he ate his way out of an eating disorder. "The food in France fed me in a different way: it was spiritually nourishing as well as delicious. I wasn’t just trying to fill a hole so I didn’t eat as much. When I went back to Denmark I wanted everyone to experience it."
He started to import French ingredients, foie gras, olive oil and truffles, and became a chef, applying French techniques and recipes to Danish produce. He became a TV star – twenty per cent of the Danish public watched his cooking programmes - but in 2001 he realised he’d got it all wrong.
‘I was down at the harbor in Copenhagen, near the site on which Noma eventually opened, where all the food arrives from the other Nordic countries. I liked the space and the smell. I suddenly thought that change had to come about with our produce, not the produce of France or Italy.’
He was struck by how fellow Danes and film makers Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg had created the Dogme 95 Manifesto, an approach to film making that set Denmark apart, marking it out as different from Hollywood. Meyer realised this philosophy could be applied to food, too: the Nordic countries didn’t have to follow, they could lead.
He finally decided to start a restaurant that would show the potential of the ingredients that were in his own backyard. This restaurant was Noma. Meyer approached Danish chef Rene Redzepi - then a 25-year-old sous chef who had worked at El Bulli in Spain and The French Laundry in California - to head up this new venture.
Claus Meyer represents all that is good about Nordic living. He’s just got off a plane but looks as if he’s been for a walk on some wild beach. He is glowingly healthy, tall and energetic.
A fifty-year-old French man of a similar level of success - Meyer runs an empire that encompasses hotels, restaurants, bakeries, delis and a charitable foundation – would be suave and formal. But Meyer - sporting jeans, All Stars and a crumpled but expensive cotton jacket – bounds into the room with the warmth of a Labrador and smiles broadly.
It’s possible you won’t have heard of him – Rene Redzepi, with whom he set up Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant which has grabbed the top slot on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list more than once – gets much more attention, but Meyer has brought about a revolution in Nordic food of which Noma is only a part.
The reasons for his dedication to improving the food of his country are obvious and painful, though he offers them without self-pity.
“I was a very unhappy child,” he says simply. “My mum and dad fought all the time and we ate food from the microwave. The vegetables were frozen and had been cooked a decade before in Eastern Europe. Everything was cheap, and most of it was dipped in melted margarine. People in Denmark believed it was a sin to put much time into cooking or into exploring the pleasures of eating. It was because of the Puritanism handed down from the past. I would say that ninety percent of the kids growing up in Denmark in the 1970s ate like I did."
This arid culinary landscape was also due, he believes, to the industrialisation of food production. "Denmark developed big cooperatives. These inhibited the kind of diversity you get in Italy and France.
"And in Denmark we gave ourselves the worst food, we had what was left after everything else had been exported. Never in the history of Denmark was there education about food."
His parents separated when he was fourteen. His father, who he says never loved him, left, and his mother became an alcoholic. Meyer went to France to work as an au-pair in his late teens and ended up living with a fourth generation baker and traiteur and his family in Gascony. It changed him for ever.
"In France I tasted food that could have been from another planet. Besides the flavours I saw a different way of life too, a capacity for enjoying the moment. That trip to France was huge for me."
Meyer was very overweight when he arrived in France, but there, as he puts it, he ate his way out of an eating disorder. "The food in France fed me in a different way: it was spiritually nourishing as well as delicious. I wasn’t just trying to fill a hole so I didn’t eat as much. When I went back to Denmark I wanted everyone to experience it."
He started to import French ingredients, foie gras, olive oil and truffles, and became a chef, applying French techniques and recipes to Danish produce. He became a TV star – twenty per cent of the Danish public watched his cooking programmes - but in 2001 he realised he’d got it all wrong.
‘I was down at the harbor in Copenhagen, near the site on which Noma eventually opened, where all the food arrives from the other Nordic countries. I liked the space and the smell. I suddenly thought that change had to come about with our produce, not the produce of France or Italy.’
He was struck by how fellow Danes and film makers Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg had created the Dogme 95 Manifesto, an approach to film making that set Denmark apart, marking it out as different from Hollywood. Meyer realised this philosophy could be applied to food, too: the Nordic countries didn’t have to follow, they could lead.
He finally decided to start a restaurant that would show the potential of the ingredients that were in his own backyard. This restaurant was Noma. Meyer approached Danish chef Rene Redzepi - then a 25-year-old sous chef who had worked at El Bulli in Spain and The French Laundry in California - to head up this new venture.
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Unfolding the potential of indigenous food cultures: Claus Meyer at TEDxCopenhagen 2012 - YouTube
Meyer knew he had to be political in order to effect real change: “To make a real cultural transformation I had to have stakeholders." So he contacted all the biggest chefs in Scandinavia, key figures in the food industry and politicians.
Working with fourteen chefs he developed the New Nordic Food Manifesto. It urges sustainability, seasonal cooking, the use of more vegetables as well as indigenous and local foods, sound animal welfare and a focus on health. It was a smart move.
"The manifesto was vague," he explains. "That way everyone would get on board and work towards change. And that change had to start with a great restaurant cooking with the food of our landscape. We had to show that beetroot could be as luxurious as truffles, that you can make a vinaigrette with buttermilk. Hundreds of restaurants took something from Noma. They realised they didn’t need to make beurre blanc or Hollandaise sauce, that there were things we could do with indigenous ingredients." There were Nordic culinary traditions – smoking, fermenting, curing – that could be built on and explored.
Meyer has been criticised for his ‘top-down’ approach, but all these years later he has had an effect, and not just in high-end dining. There is much more demand for Nordic produce in Denmark; cooking is now more vegetable-centric and sustainability very much to the fore.
Food lovers flock to eat the ‘new Nordic’ food that’s cooked in restaurants all over Scandinavia (so the tourist boards and politicians are happy) but the reach of Meyer and Redzepi has gone beyond their own back yard. There are Nordic-inspired restaurants with wooden tables, stoneware ceramics, ‘ferments’, minimalist menu speak ("beet, ash, liquorice") everywhere, from Volt in Stockholm to Septime in Paris and Lyle’s in London.
Meyer, putting food and philanthropy together, set up Gustu in Bolivia in 2013, where two Danish chefs are trying to create a kind of Andean Noma, using ingredients that are indigenous to the region while employing and training marginalized youth.
Meyer admits that his connection to Noma – he has now sold most of his share in it – has had disadvantages as well as advantages.
"People confuse the Manifesto with what Rene is doing. Rene has just taken the tenets of it. They think the manifesto laid down laws - like you can’t use tomatoes in a Nordic kitchen - but that wasn’t the case. That was something that they followed at Noma, but that was their decision - Rene’s. He is doing his own thing."
The home kitchen is what Meyer is focusing on right now, which, of course, is the whole point. If you ever wondered what the New Nordic Food Manifesto means when you’re cooking for your family, it’s in The Nordic Kitchen, his book of seasonal Scandinavian dishes. Mussel soup with barley and wild garlic, roast chicken with rhubarb: there’s no cheap bacon or marge here.
In Denmark, where they published a longer version, the book has become a culinary bible. "People use it every day," Meyer says. He smiles with pride. He is restless, a serial entrepreneur, driven, ambitious (he is about to open his first restaurant and a food hall in New York) a wealthy celebrity in a country that values humility so, despite the social programmes, he does get criticised.
But it’s hard to resent the joy he takes in what he’s achieved. No, not everyone in Scandinavia is eating mounds of vegetables they’ve dug up that morning, or fermenting their own Nordic miso. But Meyer knows what he’s done.
"A large number of important people, opinion formers with influence on people’s lives, have come to believe that the values in the New Nordic Cuisine Manifesto aren’t a trend, that they’re now the new normal. Change takes time. But I think we’ve made a good start."
How many of us can say that?
Meet the man behind the Nordic food revolution
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.
.
Tuesday, 9 April 2019
Council tax rises are "the highest in rural areas"
Council tax is going up:
Futures Forum: District and County Council announce spending plans in a new year of austerity for local government
And it seems it's going up more in some areas than others, as reported by the Rural Services Network:
Council tax rises highest in rural areas - Rural Services Network
From that BBC report:
Typical council tax in England will rise by 4.7% in April - BBC News
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Futures Forum: District and County Council announce spending plans in a new year of austerity for local government
And it seems it's going up more in some areas than others, as reported by the Rural Services Network:
01.04.2019
COUNCIL TAX RISES HIGHEST IN RURAL AREAS
Council tax rises highest in rural areas - Rural Services Network
From that BBC report:
Councillor Nick Rushton, County Councils Network finance spokesman and leader of Leicestershire County Council, said: "For a long time, county residents have borne the brunt of the historic underfunding of county areas. It cannot be fair that a resident in a terraced home in Hinkley in Leicestershire is paying double that of a resident in a multi-million-pound house in Westminster.
"No-one wants to put up council tax, but many of us have very little option with county authorities facing the most severe financial pressures."
Typical council tax in England will rise by 4.7% in April - BBC News
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Sunday, 31 March 2019
A solution to our housing problems: socialisation
There have been calls for more social housing:
Futures Forum: A year on from the Grenfell Tower fire, and the debate around social housing continues...
Futures Forum: A solution to our housing problems: "A vision for social housing"
Futures Forum: A solution to our housing problems: build more council houses
But perhaps, rather than asking the state to do this, it can be a genuine grassroots initiative - as shown in Berlin - although the headline in the otherwise excellent piece in The Conversation recently calls this 'renationalise' rather than the activists' preferred 'socialise':
Joanna Kusiak
Berlin's grassroots plan to renationalise up to 200,000 ex-council homes from corporate landlords
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Futures Forum: A year on from the Grenfell Tower fire, and the debate around social housing continues...
Futures Forum: A solution to our housing problems: "A vision for social housing"
Futures Forum: A solution to our housing problems: build more council houses
But perhaps, rather than asking the state to do this, it can be a genuine grassroots initiative - as shown in Berlin - although the headline in the otherwise excellent piece in The Conversation recently calls this 'renationalise' rather than the activists' preferred 'socialise':
Berlin’s grassroots plan to renationalise up to 200,000 ex-council homes from corporate landlords
Joanna Kusiak
Research Fellow in Urban Studies, University of Cambridge
In major cities throughout the world, the price of housing is on the rise: in 2017 alone, prices leaped by 20.5% in Berlin, 16% in Vancouver and 14.8% in Hong Kong. As rents keep going up, activists in Berlin are spearheading a novel proposal to nationalise housing. Such response might sound quixotic in cities such as London, but 54.9% of Berliners consider it reasonable. And instead of waiting for the government to act, citizens have taken matters into their own hands.
On April 6, 2019 the civic campaign Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen (DWE for short) starts collecting signatures, with the aim to hold a referendum that could lead to renationalisation of up to 200,000 council flats, which were previously sold to corporate landlords.
If successful, the move could provide a legal precedent for other cities to call for nationalisaton as a modern and legitimate solution to their housing crises. It could also prompt changes to international law, empowering legislation initiatives that see housing as a human right, as a strategic resource or as global commons.
For Berliners, it not only matters who owns the housing, but also how they own it. Nationalisation is often associated with centralised, if not authoritarian governance, and inefficient administration. That’s why DWE uses a different legal concept: “Vergesellschaftung” (which translates to “socialisation”) – or social ownership. This model presumes that once flats are made public, they will also be democratically managed.
The new social housing
The activists envision a new public institution aimed at providing affordable flats to Berliners of all nationalities. Tenants, administration workers and members of the public would be equally represented in its governing body, which would also include members of Berlin’s senate. All profits from rent would be used for the maintenance and modernisation of buildings, and for the construction of new housing.
But how much would it cost the city to reclaim apartments sold to corporate landlords, considering the record 20.5% leap in housing prices in 2017? While the exact amount of compensation would be negotiated in the court, there are reasons to believe that it won’t be anywhere near market prices.
But how much would it cost the city to reclaim apartments sold to corporate landlords, considering the record 20.5% leap in housing prices in 2017? While the exact amount of compensation would be negotiated in the court, there are reasons to believe that it won’t be anywhere near market prices.
Crucial here is article 15 of the German constitution, created after World War II, which allows either state or local governments to turn land, natural resources and means of production into collective ownership “for the purposes of socialisation”. This legal clause would be the key leverage to ban corporate landlords with more than 3,000 properties from of the city.
After World War II, legislators of all political factions believed economic monopolies to be dangerous for democracy. Indeed, several German industry giants had willingly cooperated with the Nazi state. Article 15 of the German constitution was designed as a tool to prevent what legal experts called a “misuse of economic power against society”.
Taking back power
According to Berlin’s housing activists, that is precisely what large housing corporations are doing today: using their economic power against society. Companies such as Deutsche Wohnen, Vonovia or Akelius – which all together own more than 200,000 flats in Berlin – can use their scale in such a way that existing mechanisms for rent control are bypassed.
For example, in Germany rent increases are usually justified in relation to the “Mietspiegel” (or “rent mirror”), calculated every year in relation to the average rent in the area. If a company owns several thousand units in one neighbourhood, its rent increases drive up the entire “rent mirror”, and so would perpetually justify further increases.
As demand for housing in Berlin has grown over the past 15 years, rents have been driven up to the point that – according to a recent study - 40% of Berliners aged between 45 and 55 are unlikely to be able to afford to stay in the city after they retire. Unless housing is socialised, that is.
Berliners are also entering into unknown legal terrain. Never in the history of the German constitution has article 15 been actually used, and until recently it seemed to have been largely forgotten. But it would be a mistake to see socialisation as an initiative confined to German law. Berlin’s housing corporations are active on the international stock market, and taking their property would lead the city government into a confrontation with international law which, in general, strongly protectscorporate private property.
This battle will be watched closely by proponents of nationalisation and other forms of progressive politics, right across Europe. While the lack of affordable housing in other cities may be driven by other factors – aside from mass housing ownership by large corporate landlords – the outcome in Berlin could lend strength to calls to nationalise empty property or vacant lots.
This would make a big difference in cities such as London, for example, where more than a third of properties in “prime” market areas remain empty. As it stands, compulsory purchase – a tool related to nationalisation – is currently being used in London for quite the opposite purpose. The city seizes council flats from tenants (who became homeowners under right-to-buy) to make space for commercial redevelopment of sites.
Enraged about the housing crisis, Berlin activists do not just push their legislators, they show them the way by actively searching for progressive possibilities inside the existing law and beyond it. However this particular legal battle pans out, Berliners have already reinvented and democratised nationalisation, turning it from a top-down state intervention, into a grassroots project. Berlin's grassroots plan to renationalise up to 200,000 ex-council homes from corporate landlords
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Friday, 29 March 2019
The story of the 'Back the South West' campaign
Back in October 2016, the Western Morning News launched its 'Back the South West' campaign, just a few months after the Brexit process lumbered into inaction:
Futures Forum: Brexit: and Back The South West
It has regularly relaunched the campaign:
Futures Forum: Tech Nation >>> "'there's more to the South West than cream teas and cowpats'"
Today there was another relaunch - of something which talks about 'growth' and whose main photo is of a motorway heading into the sunny uplands:
Forget Brexit - it's the day to #BackTheSouthWest
As Brexit turmoil continues to reign in the UK, we have seized to day to relaunch #BackTheSouthWest
By Hannah Finch
29 MAR 2019
In closing, Members highlighted the importance of South West MPs joining together to ensure the region receives its fair share of funding, and if we can just get the infrastructure right, the South West’s best is yet to come.
Minister for Local Growth, Jake Berry MP, said: “This is the year of regional growth, and the South West must be at the heart of it.”
As we get set to launch this latest phase of the #BackTheSouthWest campaign, the Western Morning News says: “We could not agree more.”
Futures Forum: Brexit: and Back The South West
It has regularly relaunched the campaign:
Futures Forum: Tech Nation >>> "'there's more to the South West than cream teas and cowpats'"
Today there was another relaunch - of something which talks about 'growth' and whose main photo is of a motorway heading into the sunny uplands:
Forget Brexit - it's the day to #BackTheSouthWest
As Brexit turmoil continues to reign in the UK, we have seized to day to relaunch #BackTheSouthWest
By Hannah Finch
29 MAR 2019
The South West must #BackTheSouthWest
With indecision thwarting today’s Brexit deadline, we say there’s never been a better time for the South West to be crystal clear about its future. What should have been a momentous day for the UK has been scuppered by delay and division. Politics as we know it has been turned upside down and the country’s growth agenda is at a standstill.
While the Brexit debacle slides on, the Western Morning News - in partnership with Pennon Group and support from LiveWest and Womble Bond Dickinson - is set to seize the day to launch the second phase of the #BackTheSouthWest campaign.
Bill Martin, editor Western Morning News, said: “We could stand around waiting for someone, anyone, to tell us what’s going on with Brexit but the future prosperity of our region is too important for that. That’s why it’s so vital to press ahead with our ambitions for #BackTheSouthWest. Our priorities remain the same, we need a transport system, including a railway that is fit for the future. We need digital connectivity, quality housing, skilled jobs and the talented staff to fill them. Our aim is to ensure that the South West backs itself to show Westminster that we are more than ready for investment.”
The #BackTheSouthWest campaign was first launched in August 2016 in response to the Brexit referendum vote. At the inaugural Growth Summit launch event, Sajid Javid, the then secretary of state for communities and local government said there has to be a credible figurehead for economic growth for the Government to be prepared to hand over powers for investment, transport and infrastructure to the region. And he called for the region to have one voice on its plans for economic prosperity.
The campaign quickly gathered momentum, garnering support from some of the region’s biggest businesses, academics and political leaders.
We presented the South West Growth Charter to Downing Street, secured a debate at Westminster and formed a South West Leaders Forum with representatives from across all sectors of the business community.
A second Growth Summit held in 2017 harnessed widespread support for unity in a region that leads the way in the aerospace and creative industries.
Now it is a question of pulling together that enthusiasm and taking that message to the rest of the country and the world.
But despite our efforts, our economy has been held back by infrastructure underspend. Five years on from the Dawlish rail disaster, trains are still being cancelled during bad weather. The M5 remains our only major route into the region and the A303 upgrades have yet to begin. But we have seen progress in the shape of an £80million pledge for rail resilience works at Dawlish and £83million for improvements to the North Devon Link Road.
And crucially, we have seen regeneration throughout the region. From the enlarged Tate St Ives, new hotel plans in Torquay or further investment in Exeter’s city centre, we are seeing great changes that are designed to boost visitor numbers and the viability of our must populated areas.
The new Messenger statue in Plymouth is a bold statement of intent for the city about its creative heritage and vision for the future.
Change happens in stages and as a region, we need the backing to make those changes a future reality.
In February, Sarah Heald, Pennon’s Director of Corporate Affairs & Investor Relations joined South West MPs and Heart of the South West LEP chief Executive David Ralph to take our case to Government.
Under Sir Gary Streeter, MP for South West Devon, MPs from across the region, from Cheltenham to the Isles of Scilly, came together to call on the Government to invest in the Great South West. MPs called on the Government to fund transport improvements, including dualling of the A303 from Ilminster to Honiton, and works to improve capacity on the M5 from Taunton to Bristol.
With indecision thwarting today’s Brexit deadline, we say there’s never been a better time for the South West to be crystal clear about its future. What should have been a momentous day for the UK has been scuppered by delay and division. Politics as we know it has been turned upside down and the country’s growth agenda is at a standstill.
While the Brexit debacle slides on, the Western Morning News - in partnership with Pennon Group and support from LiveWest and Womble Bond Dickinson - is set to seize the day to launch the second phase of the #BackTheSouthWest campaign.
Bill Martin, editor Western Morning News, said: “We could stand around waiting for someone, anyone, to tell us what’s going on with Brexit but the future prosperity of our region is too important for that. That’s why it’s so vital to press ahead with our ambitions for #BackTheSouthWest. Our priorities remain the same, we need a transport system, including a railway that is fit for the future. We need digital connectivity, quality housing, skilled jobs and the talented staff to fill them. Our aim is to ensure that the South West backs itself to show Westminster that we are more than ready for investment.”
The #BackTheSouthWest campaign was first launched in August 2016 in response to the Brexit referendum vote. At the inaugural Growth Summit launch event, Sajid Javid, the then secretary of state for communities and local government said there has to be a credible figurehead for economic growth for the Government to be prepared to hand over powers for investment, transport and infrastructure to the region. And he called for the region to have one voice on its plans for economic prosperity.
The campaign quickly gathered momentum, garnering support from some of the region’s biggest businesses, academics and political leaders.
We presented the South West Growth Charter to Downing Street, secured a debate at Westminster and formed a South West Leaders Forum with representatives from across all sectors of the business community.
A second Growth Summit held in 2017 harnessed widespread support for unity in a region that leads the way in the aerospace and creative industries.
Now it is a question of pulling together that enthusiasm and taking that message to the rest of the country and the world.
But despite our efforts, our economy has been held back by infrastructure underspend. Five years on from the Dawlish rail disaster, trains are still being cancelled during bad weather. The M5 remains our only major route into the region and the A303 upgrades have yet to begin. But we have seen progress in the shape of an £80million pledge for rail resilience works at Dawlish and £83million for improvements to the North Devon Link Road.
And crucially, we have seen regeneration throughout the region. From the enlarged Tate St Ives, new hotel plans in Torquay or further investment in Exeter’s city centre, we are seeing great changes that are designed to boost visitor numbers and the viability of our must populated areas.
The new Messenger statue in Plymouth is a bold statement of intent for the city about its creative heritage and vision for the future.
Change happens in stages and as a region, we need the backing to make those changes a future reality.
In February, Sarah Heald, Pennon’s Director of Corporate Affairs & Investor Relations joined South West MPs and Heart of the South West LEP chief Executive David Ralph to take our case to Government.
Under Sir Gary Streeter, MP for South West Devon, MPs from across the region, from Cheltenham to the Isles of Scilly, came together to call on the Government to invest in the Great South West. MPs called on the Government to fund transport improvements, including dualling of the A303 from Ilminster to Honiton, and works to improve capacity on the M5 from Taunton to Bristol.
In closing, Members highlighted the importance of South West MPs joining together to ensure the region receives its fair share of funding, and if we can just get the infrastructure right, the South West’s best is yet to come.
Minister for Local Growth, Jake Berry MP, said: “This is the year of regional growth, and the South West must be at the heart of it.”
As we get set to launch this latest phase of the #BackTheSouthWest campaign, the Western Morning News says: “We could not agree more.”
Thursday, 28 March 2019
"For too long wealth and power has been concentrated in our cities. We need a political economy of everyday life."
There has been a lot of talk of late on the importance of our towns:
Futures Forum: 'Is it time to pay attention to towns as distinct types of places - both as sweet spots for understanding political change, and as laboratories for social policy?'
A recent piece in the New Statesman looks at the decades-long neglect of our towns:
For too long wealth and power has been concentrated in our cities
In rural areas, the urban hinterlands and ex-industrial and coastal towns a different society has taken shape – more equal but poorer.
BY RACHEL REEVES 20 MARCH 2019
John Gray rightly argued in these pages last week that there is no going back to the world as it was. Nor would many desire it. The Brexit vote was a decisive rejection of the status quo, and politicians’ response has so far been inadequate. Whatever happens after the resolution of the Brexit process, we need a radical transformation of Britain’s economic settlement.
The origins of our political crisis lie in the liberal market settlement of the last four decades. Globalisation increased trade, brought down prices and raised millions out of poverty, but globalisation also eroded national sovereignty and democracy. The financial sector, followed by big tech, became a law unto themselves. Britain went further than others with this liberalisation. Politics became technocratic and our democracy failed to represent those experiencing the negative impacts of globalisation. The consequence has been a crisis of Britain’s constitutional order.
Britain is divided by geography and class. In the globally connected, deeply unequal metropolitan cities the asset-rich elite and the professional classes have taken the lion’s share of wealth, jobs, and political and economic power. In rural areas, the urban hinterlands and ex-industrial and coastal towns a different society has taken shape – more equal but poorer.
Here, the loss of industrial work has led to the destruction of the labour interest and its collective political power and identity. The growth in low-paid, low-skill and temporary jobs has created a precarious society. The human cost has been higher levels of chronic illness, loneliness and social isolation. In the EU referendum the majority voted against the political establishment, accusing it of ignoring their concerns and failing to safeguard national sovereignty.
Centre-left politics has not grasped the nature of this crisis. We have neglected or shown contempt for the things that matter to people. We have failed to rethink our political economy and the gains of right-wing populism have been the consequence. The safeguarding of our democracy and prosperity depends upon our ability to unite our national political community. It will require fundamental reform of our economy that focuses on the everyday life of work, family and the places people live.
Past governments have too readily accepted a model reliant on the globally mobile, financially extractive parts of the economy. We focus too much on high-growth industries and too little on where most people work – the everyday economy, which is made up of the private, public and social sectors in every region whose services and goods sustain our daily lives.
It is the social foundation of our country, sustained by the hard work of people who are frequently under-appreciated. Without them our schools, nurseries, hospitals, care homes, warehouses, food processing centres, supermarkets, hotels, cafés and restaurants would shut down. Our public service infrastructure would collapse.
Outside London and the south-east no region has yet fully recovered from the Great Recession. And yet policy concentrates on the cities as engines of growth and on the property development, technology and trading sectors. It neglects the middle- and low-paid and the civic infrastructure required to develop research and innovation across the whole economy. And it tends to exclude rural areas and towns from the wealth-creating activity it is promoting.
The correct response to the 2008 crisis and to the 2016 referendum would have been to prioritise the social and economic problems impacting these areas. Communities are at the core of reversing economic decline but we patronise them with a command-and-control approach. Effective devolution demands a radical change in how central government works.
Deindustrialised and cut-off places suffer economic disadvantage but retain strong social bonds. Everyday economics builds upon these relationships to create new forms of economic activity. It involves breaking up unaccountable concentrations of power, and a transfer of rights and powers to ordinary people, workers and their communities. It means guaranteeing universal basic infrastructure across the country and building up locally owned assets.
Businesses have become untethered from responsibilities beyond those owed to shareholders. We need reform of corporate governance to create grounded firms, responsive to their workforce and to the communities in which they operate. Central and local government can use their contracting powers to implement a form of social licensing. And government must break up monopolies and cartels, such as those in energy, house building and tech, which undermine our democracy and economy.
In the decades of the Industrial Revolution, Labour built its political power around the everyday economy of work, clean water, utilities, housing, education, and social services. It grew its roots in local places protecting working people, their neighbourhoods and their family life. We once again need a political economy of everyday life.
Rachel Reeves is a Labour MP for Leeds West and author of “Women of Westminster: The MPs Who Changed Politics” (IB Tauris)
For too long wealth and power has been concentrated in our cities - New Stateman
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Futures Forum: 'Is it time to pay attention to towns as distinct types of places - both as sweet spots for understanding political change, and as laboratories for social policy?'
A recent piece in the New Statesman looks at the decades-long neglect of our towns:
For too long wealth and power has been concentrated in our cities
In rural areas, the urban hinterlands and ex-industrial and coastal towns a different society has taken shape – more equal but poorer.
BY RACHEL REEVES 20 MARCH 2019
John Gray rightly argued in these pages last week that there is no going back to the world as it was. Nor would many desire it. The Brexit vote was a decisive rejection of the status quo, and politicians’ response has so far been inadequate. Whatever happens after the resolution of the Brexit process, we need a radical transformation of Britain’s economic settlement.
The origins of our political crisis lie in the liberal market settlement of the last four decades. Globalisation increased trade, brought down prices and raised millions out of poverty, but globalisation also eroded national sovereignty and democracy. The financial sector, followed by big tech, became a law unto themselves. Britain went further than others with this liberalisation. Politics became technocratic and our democracy failed to represent those experiencing the negative impacts of globalisation. The consequence has been a crisis of Britain’s constitutional order.
Britain is divided by geography and class. In the globally connected, deeply unequal metropolitan cities the asset-rich elite and the professional classes have taken the lion’s share of wealth, jobs, and political and economic power. In rural areas, the urban hinterlands and ex-industrial and coastal towns a different society has taken shape – more equal but poorer.
Here, the loss of industrial work has led to the destruction of the labour interest and its collective political power and identity. The growth in low-paid, low-skill and temporary jobs has created a precarious society. The human cost has been higher levels of chronic illness, loneliness and social isolation. In the EU referendum the majority voted against the political establishment, accusing it of ignoring their concerns and failing to safeguard national sovereignty.
Centre-left politics has not grasped the nature of this crisis. We have neglected or shown contempt for the things that matter to people. We have failed to rethink our political economy and the gains of right-wing populism have been the consequence. The safeguarding of our democracy and prosperity depends upon our ability to unite our national political community. It will require fundamental reform of our economy that focuses on the everyday life of work, family and the places people live.
Past governments have too readily accepted a model reliant on the globally mobile, financially extractive parts of the economy. We focus too much on high-growth industries and too little on where most people work – the everyday economy, which is made up of the private, public and social sectors in every region whose services and goods sustain our daily lives.
It is the social foundation of our country, sustained by the hard work of people who are frequently under-appreciated. Without them our schools, nurseries, hospitals, care homes, warehouses, food processing centres, supermarkets, hotels, cafés and restaurants would shut down. Our public service infrastructure would collapse.
Outside London and the south-east no region has yet fully recovered from the Great Recession. And yet policy concentrates on the cities as engines of growth and on the property development, technology and trading sectors. It neglects the middle- and low-paid and the civic infrastructure required to develop research and innovation across the whole economy. And it tends to exclude rural areas and towns from the wealth-creating activity it is promoting.
The correct response to the 2008 crisis and to the 2016 referendum would have been to prioritise the social and economic problems impacting these areas. Communities are at the core of reversing economic decline but we patronise them with a command-and-control approach. Effective devolution demands a radical change in how central government works.
Deindustrialised and cut-off places suffer economic disadvantage but retain strong social bonds. Everyday economics builds upon these relationships to create new forms of economic activity. It involves breaking up unaccountable concentrations of power, and a transfer of rights and powers to ordinary people, workers and their communities. It means guaranteeing universal basic infrastructure across the country and building up locally owned assets.
Businesses have become untethered from responsibilities beyond those owed to shareholders. We need reform of corporate governance to create grounded firms, responsive to their workforce and to the communities in which they operate. Central and local government can use their contracting powers to implement a form of social licensing. And government must break up monopolies and cartels, such as those in energy, house building and tech, which undermine our democracy and economy.
In the decades of the Industrial Revolution, Labour built its political power around the everyday economy of work, clean water, utilities, housing, education, and social services. It grew its roots in local places protecting working people, their neighbourhoods and their family life. We once again need a political economy of everyday life.
Rachel Reeves is a Labour MP for Leeds West and author of “Women of Westminster: The MPs Who Changed Politics” (IB Tauris)
For too long wealth and power has been concentrated in our cities - New Stateman
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Tuesday, 26 March 2019
'Is it time to pay attention to towns as distinct types of places - both as sweet spots for understanding political change, and as laboratories for social policy?'
Towns need help - and are getting some:
Futures Forum: Brexit: and the Stronger Towns Fund
One problem is that towns are being neglected:
Futures Forum: Brexit: and Britain's cities growing younger and its small towns growing older at a faster rate than at any other time in recent history
Futures Forum: Maintaining a balanced community in Sidmouth >>> "The town is not well supplied with facilities for younger people and the closure of the only nightclub is a loss."
Futures Forum: The South West: "This is where the young people are struggling to get on to the property ladder which is why towns are banning holiday homes."
And cities are getting most of the attention:
Futures Forum: Will the 'Future Places' programme for Greater Exeter "enhance people’s lives, improve community wellbeing and create sustainable environments"?
... whilst perhaps they shouldn't:
Futures Forum: Sustainable urbanisation: another oxymoron?
Here's a very critical piece on the phenomenon:
Is Urbanism the New Trickle-Down Economics? | Newgeography.com
Meanwhile, though, there is an initiative looking after towns:
Centre for Cities - Wikipedia
Centre For Towns - Home
And there's a particular initiative which has been looking after the town of Wigan:
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Small things make a great deal - Wigan Council - YouTube
What is The Deal?
The Deal - wigan.gov.uk
Lessons from the Wigan Deal | The King's Fund
Wigan Council! What are you doing to our towns? public group | Facebook
Radio 4 this evening looks at what's been happening in Wigan:
Going to Town
In politics and in the national psyche, towns have long been sidelined by cities. Many feel that towns have been disproportionately affected by austerity, due to an urban-centric model that guides policy and the negative repercussions of globalisation and technological change.
Futures Forum: Brexit: and the Stronger Towns Fund
One problem is that towns are being neglected:
Futures Forum: Brexit: and Britain's cities growing younger and its small towns growing older at a faster rate than at any other time in recent history
Futures Forum: Maintaining a balanced community in Sidmouth >>> "The town is not well supplied with facilities for younger people and the closure of the only nightclub is a loss."
Futures Forum: The South West: "This is where the young people are struggling to get on to the property ladder which is why towns are banning holiday homes."
And cities are getting most of the attention:
Futures Forum: Will the 'Future Places' programme for Greater Exeter "enhance people’s lives, improve community wellbeing and create sustainable environments"?
... whilst perhaps they shouldn't:
Futures Forum: Sustainable urbanisation: another oxymoron?
Here's a very critical piece on the phenomenon:
Is Urbanism the New Trickle-Down Economics? | Newgeography.com
Meanwhile, though, there is an initiative looking after towns:
Centre for Cities - Wikipedia
Centre For Towns - Home
And there's a particular initiative which has been looking after the town of Wigan:
.
Small things make a great deal - Wigan Council - YouTube
What is The Deal?
The Deal - wigan.gov.uk
Lessons from the Wigan Deal | The King's Fund
Wigan Council! What are you doing to our towns? public group | Facebook
Radio 4 this evening looks at what's been happening in Wigan:
Going to Town
In politics and in the national psyche, towns have long been sidelined by cities. Many feel that towns have been disproportionately affected by austerity, due to an urban-centric model that guides policy and the negative repercussions of globalisation and technological change.
But almost half of the UK's population lives in towns and, as the Brexit referendum revealed, towns have the power to shape the country's future.
Wigan has many markers of struggle — post-industrial decline, poverty, an ageing population — but it is upending the narrative of despair that often surrounds towns. When austerity cuts were implemented nearly a decade ago, Wigan council was among the worst hit and it had no choice but to do things differently and shift power into the hands of the community. In the years since, the town has seen improved health and economic indicators, and a more engaged citizenry.
Professor of Politics Anand Menon asks if Wigan offers a way forward for towns across the UK. And is it time to pay attention to towns as distinct types of places - both as sweet spots for understanding political change, and as laboratories for social policy?
Going to Town - BBC Sounds
BBC Radio 4 - Going to Town
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Going to Town - BBC Sounds
BBC Radio 4 - Going to Town
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Wednesday, 20 March 2019
Are councils failing to apply discounts on business rates?
A year ago, there was a lot of noise about how high and how unfair business rates were:
Futures Forum: How to revive the health of high streets > make business rates fairer
There has been pressure to act:
Futures Forum: Calling for a Royal Commission into business rates
And yet earlier in the year, it seemed that businesses would have to pay more:
Futures Forum: High street shops to expect rise in business rates
However, the Chancellor has stepped in:
Autumn Budget 2018: Business rates relief for indies confirmed | News | Drapers
Autumn Budget confirms £1.5bn high street relief & digital services tax
Budget 2018: Business rates cut by a third - Hammond bid to save Britain's High Street | Politics | News | Express.co.uk
Budget to offer business rates relief for small shops | UK news | The Guardian
The problem is that councils are not following this up:
Retailers left without promised rates relief
20 MARCH 2019
Futures Forum: How to revive the health of high streets > make business rates fairer
There has been pressure to act:
Futures Forum: Calling for a Royal Commission into business rates
And yet earlier in the year, it seemed that businesses would have to pay more:
Futures Forum: High street shops to expect rise in business rates
However, the Chancellor has stepped in:
Autumn Budget 2018: Business rates relief for indies confirmed | News | Drapers
Autumn Budget confirms £1.5bn high street relief & digital services tax
Budget 2018: Business rates cut by a third - Hammond bid to save Britain's High Street | Politics | News | Express.co.uk
Budget to offer business rates relief for small shops | UK news | The Guardian
The problem is that councils are not following this up:
Retailers left without promised rates relief
20 MARCH 2019
BY GRACE WHELAN
Many eligible retailers have been left without their business rates discounts worth up to £8,000 as local councils face problems in applying the renewed rates, just two weeks before the start of the new tax year.
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, announced in the 2018 Budget that the government would cut business rates by one third for businesses with a rateable value of less than £51,000 for two years from April 2019.
This will be the first time business rates in England have risen above 50% adding an extra £127.88m in inflationary business rates paid by the retail sector, according to real estate advisor Altus Group.
However, with the new tax year fast approaching, many retailers are still awaiting their discounts or have failed to apply for them, new research has found.
In York, over 1,000 retailers received their new tax demands without the discount having been applied – an error which the council blamed on a lack of software to calculate and apply the reduced rates.
Richmond council has reported that of the 1,250 businesses eligible for the business rates relief, only 400 have applied. Business development service, Invest in Bath, said that less than half of the 800 retailers in the city have applied for the discount despite being issued with demands.
Head of UK business rates at Altus Group, Robert Hayton, said: “Councils should apply the discount automatically to those premises not part of a chain and unlikely to be impacted by state aid rules whilst bills could have been manually adjusted to avoid the uncertainty and subsequent cost of re-billing.”
The Local Government Association said it is aware of the issues as are officials at the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). It admitted that software suppliers have been slow with updates causing problems with the discounts.
The MHCLG is encouraging councils to distribute the discounts. A spokeswoman said: ”We made it clear to councils that the business rates discount for eligible retailers should be applied when this year’s bills were issued. We provided guidance and many authorities have already complied but would encourage others to implement the discount as quickly as possible.”
A spokesman for the LGA added: “Different authorities will have different approaches – some will send it out automatically and wait for businesses to tell them if they are non-eligible and others will wait for businesses to apply. It is up to councils to establish eligibility.”
The standard tax rate, which applies to all medium and large premises in England with a rateable value over £51,000, and precluded from the new discount, will rise by 2.4% to 50.4p in England on 1 April.
Retailers left without promised rates relief | News | Drapers
For East Devon, here's more information:
Apply for Small Business Rate Relief - East Devon
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Many eligible retailers have been left without their business rates discounts worth up to £8,000 as local councils face problems in applying the renewed rates, just two weeks before the start of the new tax year.
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, announced in the 2018 Budget that the government would cut business rates by one third for businesses with a rateable value of less than £51,000 for two years from April 2019.
This will be the first time business rates in England have risen above 50% adding an extra £127.88m in inflationary business rates paid by the retail sector, according to real estate advisor Altus Group.
However, with the new tax year fast approaching, many retailers are still awaiting their discounts or have failed to apply for them, new research has found.
In York, over 1,000 retailers received their new tax demands without the discount having been applied – an error which the council blamed on a lack of software to calculate and apply the reduced rates.
Richmond council has reported that of the 1,250 businesses eligible for the business rates relief, only 400 have applied. Business development service, Invest in Bath, said that less than half of the 800 retailers in the city have applied for the discount despite being issued with demands.
Head of UK business rates at Altus Group, Robert Hayton, said: “Councils should apply the discount automatically to those premises not part of a chain and unlikely to be impacted by state aid rules whilst bills could have been manually adjusted to avoid the uncertainty and subsequent cost of re-billing.”
The Local Government Association said it is aware of the issues as are officials at the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). It admitted that software suppliers have been slow with updates causing problems with the discounts.
The MHCLG is encouraging councils to distribute the discounts. A spokeswoman said: ”We made it clear to councils that the business rates discount for eligible retailers should be applied when this year’s bills were issued. We provided guidance and many authorities have already complied but would encourage others to implement the discount as quickly as possible.”
A spokesman for the LGA added: “Different authorities will have different approaches – some will send it out automatically and wait for businesses to tell them if they are non-eligible and others will wait for businesses to apply. It is up to councils to establish eligibility.”
The standard tax rate, which applies to all medium and large premises in England with a rateable value over £51,000, and precluded from the new discount, will rise by 2.4% to 50.4p in England on 1 April.
Retailers left without promised rates relief | News | Drapers
For East Devon, here's more information:
Apply for Small Business Rate Relief - East Devon
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Monday, 18 March 2019
Preston has become a testing ground for a new way to run a local economy
Interesting things are happening in Preston, Lancashire:
Futures Forum: Preston: Post Brexit city - Co-operatives for an Age of Crisis > How the 'Preston Model' is boosting the local economy
Futures Forum: How local authorities can boost their economies
It won the award for social enterprise and, to quote a correspondent, "has transformed the city from one where dereliction was a word most used to describe the city - to entrepreneurship, growth and cooperatives as the norm now."
Shortlist announced for the UK Social Enterprise Awards 2017 - Co-operative News
And so we have the 'Preston Model':
The national media has been showing increasing interest of late:
A People’s Production Lab is reimagining Preston using art – and cooperatives
Preston has become a testing ground for a new way to run a local economy
Friday 8 March 2019
It’s Saturday morning in Preston and groups of people are hunched over whiteboards printed with maps of their neighbourhoods, covering them with Post-it notes.
“Green land for dog walks,” one reads. A street is marked “dark @ night” and another “hangout spot”. The groups are identifying what’s already available in neighbourhoods and what is desirable. It is part of the social action lab, a project with the British Council and the University of Central Lancashire to encourage Preston residents to become more active within their communities by offering them seed funding to develop projects.
The social action lab, which brings together artists, community activists and residents, is exactly the kind of thing Ruth Heritage hoped to support in Preston when she opened the People’s Production Lab in November 2017. The next step is to turn the many businesses and artists working within the Lab into a cooperative, owned and run by the people who work there, to make it sustainable.
Read more
The design secrets of the UK’s biggest cooperative
Could co-operative shops be the answer to expensive organic foods?
These platform co-operatives are creating a worker-owned economy
Preston has become a testing ground for a new way to run a local economy. The “Preston model” is rooted in the development of cooperatives, or businesses owned by workers, rather than shareholders in remote locations looking to extract value with stocks and dividends.
Cooperative startups have been shown to be more resilient during times of economic stress. While 44 per cent of new businesses survive their early years, 80 per cent of cooperatives go on to thrive, according to a 2018 report on the cooperative economy by Cooperatives UK.
Preston Council has just announced up to £1m in funding to support the development of cooperatives in the area. The funding will come from Preston City Council, the University of Central Lancashire and the Open Society Foundations, which was started by hedge fund billionaire George Soros. It will create 10 new cooperatives, owned and run by workers in Preston, building on the work of community businesses with ambitions to become cooperatives, like the People’s Production Lab and others.
“There are artists studios and shared spaces in Preston, but we’re trying to evolve a way of creating shared facilities that people can use rather than individual spaces,” Heritage says.
Anthony King runs a startup screen printing studio called Priestown Press from the People’s Production Lab. “I was out of work for quite a while after some surgery,” King says. “My wife suggested I get back into art. The Lab has allowed us to expand and have the space to be artists. It’s subsidised, so it’s beneficial for artists who are struggling. There aren’t that many in Preston.”
Priestown Press prints garments for street artists in Preston and London. Through the social action lab, King has been working on turning the studio into a community resource and a place for art therapy.
“It’s evolving into a social enterprise,” King says. “Especially for mental health, art can be very therapeutic. Suicide is on the rise among men and younger people, so if we can do projects that get kids doing things, rather than keeping themselves to themselves, then it can only help.”
Tom Stables is the chair of Digital Lancashire, a non-profit organisation that supports the digital economy in Lancashire. Stables says the area is already home to multiple agencies, software houses and creative enterprises. Digital Lancashire has worked with accountants and TV companies, helping them develop their digital clientele and acquire funding to expand.
Stables is considering basing Digital Lancashire within the People’s Production Lab where it can nurture partnerships with other businesses. “Having the People’s Production Lab on our doorstep is terrific,” he says. “As well as being a place that our board meet, a number of our members have the space to grow and thrive.”
Heritage talks breathlessly of plans for live storytelling projects, comedy programmes developing new talent, a community culture guide and a vegan pop-up experience. “I want there to be a lot of action on the ground,” she says. “Preston has been held back by being off the beaten track and by not having relationships with central government but the tide is turning. The time is now.”
In an era of brutal cuts, one ordinary place has the imagination to fight back
These are bleak times for progressives, but in Preston a socialist Dragons’ Den is proving to be inspirational
The inspiration comes from Mondragón, in Spain’s Basque Country. What is today the world’s biggest cooperative began in the 1950s, after the devastation of the civil war. Now employing almost 80,000 workers, it ranks among the largest companies in Spain, runs a vast chain of supermarkets, and exports around the world. The employees are the bosses, and no one earns more than six times what anyone else does(at British housebuilder Persimmon, by comparison, ex-CEO Jeff Fairburn got paid over 3,000 times his most junior staff. Yet every venture has paid its way. Those are the same values that Julian Manley, heading Preston’s cooperative scheme, wants inculcated among the 10 new businesses. Within a decade, he hopes Preston will be a mini-Mondragón – a city that gave birth to an entirely new economy.
By the time the first co-ops are up and running, Preston’s council leader, Matthew Brown, also plans to launch a new people’s bank for the north-west. Its branches will be on high streets from the Wirral to Cumbria, and it will lend about £500m, of which one-third will go to small businesses in the region. Again, it will be run as a co-op, and with values that run entirely counter to the banking system that crashed in 2008. Rather than giving bonuses, making multinational deals and screwing over punters, it will aim to be local, trustworthy and very boring.
In Brown’s wood-panelled office hangs a Sex Pistols poster, while facing him every day is a portrait of Tony Benn. Yet for all the firebrandery pinned up on his walls, the council leader himself says the most radical things as mildly as one might ask whether you take milk and sugar. What’s his ultimate goal? “It’s about building an alternative to capitalism – a capitalism that has failed this city and this country.”
And while the words are muttered in the direction of his shoes, there’s no doubting Brown’s ambition. Even as other councils are scrapping or selling their most prized services and buildings, a small and often-overlooked city is building bold new institutions.
There is nothing special about Preston. It is as battered as anywhere else in England. It is just as starved of cash. After a decade of cuts, admits the councillor in charge of finances, Martyn Rawlinson, an aged couple with rats in their house will be waiting weeks for the city’s pest control to come out. So why not devote every penny, every minute of municipal resources to preserving services, rather than to these experiments? “Because this is about building something different and better for ourselves,” he says.
I fully expect some of these ideas to crash and burn. Others need to be improved. Preston hosts an annual carnival, its taxi drivers can speak Urdu, and its shop signs are often in Polski. Yet its new-model economy is, so far, white and male. But as Rawlinson argues, more of the same policies will produce more of the same failure. That knowledge, and the desire to act on it, is spreading elsewhere. It’s why Hartlepool wants to take a leaf out of Preston’s book, as does Labour’s candidate for North of Tyne metro mayor, Jamie Driscoll. It’s why Bristol and the south west are also looking at people’s banks while the Welsh government has just started to fund the idea of a foundational economy focused on locals’ needs such as social care, good schools and broadband I have previously discussed.
These are bleak times for anyone who wants a more progressive politics in Britain. We are hostages to a rightwing project, Brexit, that has failed before it has even launched. Our government bursts with chancers and buffoons who are incapable of chartering a ferry service. Yet it remains a country with the imagination to try new things and the fight to make them work. As I leave Manley, I ask if he is serious about building a new economy in his hometown. The co-ops of Mondragón, I point out, benefit from tax breaks and an entirely different political culture.
“Yes, they never had Thatcher,” Manley agrees. “But they had General Franco, and they built something new among bombed-out ruins. If they did that, why can’t we? It’s tough – so what?”
• Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist and senior economics commentator
In an era of brutal cuts, one ordinary place has the imagination to fight back | Aditya Chakrabortty | Opinion | The Guardian
Futures Forum: Preston: Post Brexit city - Co-operatives for an Age of Crisis > How the 'Preston Model' is boosting the local economy
Futures Forum: How local authorities can boost their economies
It won the award for social enterprise and, to quote a correspondent, "has transformed the city from one where dereliction was a word most used to describe the city - to entrepreneurship, growth and cooperatives as the norm now."
Shortlist announced for the UK Social Enterprise Awards 2017 - Co-operative News
And so we have the 'Preston Model':
What is the Preston Model | Preston City Council
Local democracy with attitude: the Preston model and how it can reduce inequality | British Politics and Policy at LSE
The Preston model: UK takes lessons in recovery from rust-belt Cleveland | Cities | The Guardian
Local democracy with attitude: the Preston model and how it can reduce inequality | British Politics and Policy at LSE
The Preston model: UK takes lessons in recovery from rust-belt Cleveland | Cities | The Guardian
The national media has been showing increasing interest of late:
A People’s Production Lab is reimagining Preston using art – and cooperatives
Preston has become a testing ground for a new way to run a local economy
Friday 8 March 2019
It’s Saturday morning in Preston and groups of people are hunched over whiteboards printed with maps of their neighbourhoods, covering them with Post-it notes.
“Green land for dog walks,” one reads. A street is marked “dark @ night” and another “hangout spot”. The groups are identifying what’s already available in neighbourhoods and what is desirable. It is part of the social action lab, a project with the British Council and the University of Central Lancashire to encourage Preston residents to become more active within their communities by offering them seed funding to develop projects.
The social action lab, which brings together artists, community activists and residents, is exactly the kind of thing Ruth Heritage hoped to support in Preston when she opened the People’s Production Lab in November 2017. The next step is to turn the many businesses and artists working within the Lab into a cooperative, owned and run by the people who work there, to make it sustainable.
Read more
The design secrets of the UK’s biggest cooperative
Could co-operative shops be the answer to expensive organic foods?
These platform co-operatives are creating a worker-owned economy
Preston has become a testing ground for a new way to run a local economy. The “Preston model” is rooted in the development of cooperatives, or businesses owned by workers, rather than shareholders in remote locations looking to extract value with stocks and dividends.
Cooperative startups have been shown to be more resilient during times of economic stress. While 44 per cent of new businesses survive their early years, 80 per cent of cooperatives go on to thrive, according to a 2018 report on the cooperative economy by Cooperatives UK.
Preston Council has just announced up to £1m in funding to support the development of cooperatives in the area. The funding will come from Preston City Council, the University of Central Lancashire and the Open Society Foundations, which was started by hedge fund billionaire George Soros. It will create 10 new cooperatives, owned and run by workers in Preston, building on the work of community businesses with ambitions to become cooperatives, like the People’s Production Lab and others.
“We want to provide equitable employment for graduates in the first instance,” says Mark Porter, a senior lecturer in web design at the University of Central Lancashire who is starting a cooperative called Preston Digital Foundation.
Mr Porter believes working at the People’s Production Lab will provide the basis for cooperation between cooperatives, one of the seven basic principles of working in this way. “Our next steps are to complete the registration process to get the coop up and running in time for summer and the next cohort of graduates and enable us to start generating revenue.”
Heritage started producing and commissioning arts and culture in Preston a decade ago under the name They Eat Culture. She began to imagine a fully-equipped creative space for the people of Preston, where digital businesses and artists could share resources and work together. In 2017, Michael Conlon, the manager of a local construction firm, suggested Heritage take on the multi-storey building at 55 Guildhall Street in the town centre. The building, previously used as offices by Lancashire County Council, had been empty since the departure of a faith school.
Within a year, Heritage and They Eat Culture have transformed the commercial building into creative spaces. Peering through the windows, I see white walls of former corporate spaces filled with equipment for a wood shop and tool library, a co-working space with desks and chairs donated by a local solicitor, a hack space with 3D printers and a sound studio with a green screen for video work. Art hangs from a washing line from the ceiling of one of the offices – now a screen printing studio. In the hallway, Heritage gets inside a makeshift photo-booth that went on tour with accompanying interview cards saying “talk to me about crime” and “talk to me about loneliness”.
Mr Porter believes working at the People’s Production Lab will provide the basis for cooperation between cooperatives, one of the seven basic principles of working in this way. “Our next steps are to complete the registration process to get the coop up and running in time for summer and the next cohort of graduates and enable us to start generating revenue.”
Heritage started producing and commissioning arts and culture in Preston a decade ago under the name They Eat Culture. She began to imagine a fully-equipped creative space for the people of Preston, where digital businesses and artists could share resources and work together. In 2017, Michael Conlon, the manager of a local construction firm, suggested Heritage take on the multi-storey building at 55 Guildhall Street in the town centre. The building, previously used as offices by Lancashire County Council, had been empty since the departure of a faith school.
Within a year, Heritage and They Eat Culture have transformed the commercial building into creative spaces. Peering through the windows, I see white walls of former corporate spaces filled with equipment for a wood shop and tool library, a co-working space with desks and chairs donated by a local solicitor, a hack space with 3D printers and a sound studio with a green screen for video work. Art hangs from a washing line from the ceiling of one of the offices – now a screen printing studio. In the hallway, Heritage gets inside a makeshift photo-booth that went on tour with accompanying interview cards saying “talk to me about crime” and “talk to me about loneliness”.
How film clubs, empty flats and job clubs can be part of community-led development in Lancashire with @ppl_preston @theyeatculture @ribbletonia #socialaction
“There are artists studios and shared spaces in Preston, but we’re trying to evolve a way of creating shared facilities that people can use rather than individual spaces,” Heritage says.
Anthony King runs a startup screen printing studio called Priestown Press from the People’s Production Lab. “I was out of work for quite a while after some surgery,” King says. “My wife suggested I get back into art. The Lab has allowed us to expand and have the space to be artists. It’s subsidised, so it’s beneficial for artists who are struggling. There aren’t that many in Preston.”
Priestown Press prints garments for street artists in Preston and London. Through the social action lab, King has been working on turning the studio into a community resource and a place for art therapy.
“It’s evolving into a social enterprise,” King says. “Especially for mental health, art can be very therapeutic. Suicide is on the rise among men and younger people, so if we can do projects that get kids doing things, rather than keeping themselves to themselves, then it can only help.”
Thank you to everyone who came along to the PPL'S Print Fair on Saturday. We had a great time and are already looking forward to our Christmas Market in partnership with @etsy_lancashire on December 8th 
Tom Stables is the chair of Digital Lancashire, a non-profit organisation that supports the digital economy in Lancashire. Stables says the area is already home to multiple agencies, software houses and creative enterprises. Digital Lancashire has worked with accountants and TV companies, helping them develop their digital clientele and acquire funding to expand.
Stables is considering basing Digital Lancashire within the People’s Production Lab where it can nurture partnerships with other businesses. “Having the People’s Production Lab on our doorstep is terrific,” he says. “As well as being a place that our board meet, a number of our members have the space to grow and thrive.”
Heritage talks breathlessly of plans for live storytelling projects, comedy programmes developing new talent, a community culture guide and a vegan pop-up experience. “I want there to be a lot of action on the ground,” she says. “Preston has been held back by being off the beaten track and by not having relationships with central government but the tide is turning. The time is now.”
A People’s Production Lab is reimagining Preston using art – and cooperatives | The Independent
And from the Guardian last week - although clumsy political labels don't necessarily help the debate:
And from the Guardian last week - although clumsy political labels don't necessarily help the debate:
In an era of brutal cuts, one ordinary place has the imagination to fight back
These are bleak times for progressives, but in Preston a socialist Dragons’ Den is proving to be inspirational
Aditya Chakrabortty
Wed 6 Mar 2019
Wed 6 Mar 2019
Last modified on Tue 12 Mar 2019
The story of local government today can be summed up in one word: cuts. Brutal, life-changing, future-cancelling cuts. As many as 1,000 children’s centres have been closed by English councils since David Cameron took office in 2010. Almost 130 libraries closed across Britain last year alone. That’s people with disabilities trapped in their homes, grandparents denied adequate care and lifeline bus services scrapped.
This is news that rarely makes the news. It is announced through notices tied around lamp-posts, rather than in the national newspapers. When Cameron and George Osborne designed their historic spending cuts to fall most heavily on local government, this was the outcome they wanted: private tragedies delivered through tens of thousands of brown envelopes plopping on to doormats across the land, rather than one glaring public outrage. Yet stack them all together and you can make two big bets about this country’s future.
First, our councils will emerge from this decade unrecognisable from how they entered it. They will be shrunken in size, in scale and in scope. Second, one of the great casualties of our decade of austerity is likely to be imagination – the sense that alternatives to this broken regime not only exist, but can be built by us. Of those predictions, it is too late to avert the first. Yet the second, I believe, can still be fought off. And for those desperate to preserve a spark of hope in a political system that feels so hopeless, let me suggest this: watch Preston.
Perhaps you already know something of the city. You may have read on these pages about its guerrilla localism, bringing tens of millions in public spending closer to home, so as to create more jobs and prosperity. How it has been praised by Jeremy Corbyn and how all the fuss prompted none other than Boris Johnson, the great silverback himself, to take a swipe at last autumn’s Tory conference: “I’m sure they’re an estimable bunch but Preston council are not the locomotive of the UK economy.” A jab swiftly parried by a study showing it to be most improved city in the UK.
The first fruits of this hard graft are there to see. Right outside the town hall is the new and award-winning covered market, a £4m contract filled almost entirely by local firms employing workers on the real living wage – public money that would otherwise in all likelihood have trickled down from Lancashire to firms headquartered in London and the south-east before no doubt winging their way offshore.
That’s the story so far, and for most councils it would amount to a good ending. Conference speeches, column inches, feet up. Not in Preston, as I discovered on a return visit last week. Instead, it is embarking on an even more radical adventure. First, we can exclusively reveal that the council is today launching a programme to incubate worker-owned cooperative businesses.
Think of it as a socialist Dragons’ Den. Using cash largely provided by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the city will fund and provide rent-free premises to 10 new firms owned and run by their workers. The scheme, worth up to £1m in cash and kind (compare that with the council’s annual budget of about £20m), will be run independently; and after their kickstart, the co-ops will be required to stand on their own two feet. Although given advice and expected to work together, none of the new enterprises will be told what to do.
The story of local government today can be summed up in one word: cuts. Brutal, life-changing, future-cancelling cuts. As many as 1,000 children’s centres have been closed by English councils since David Cameron took office in 2010. Almost 130 libraries closed across Britain last year alone. That’s people with disabilities trapped in their homes, grandparents denied adequate care and lifeline bus services scrapped.
This is news that rarely makes the news. It is announced through notices tied around lamp-posts, rather than in the national newspapers. When Cameron and George Osborne designed their historic spending cuts to fall most heavily on local government, this was the outcome they wanted: private tragedies delivered through tens of thousands of brown envelopes plopping on to doormats across the land, rather than one glaring public outrage. Yet stack them all together and you can make two big bets about this country’s future.
First, our councils will emerge from this decade unrecognisable from how they entered it. They will be shrunken in size, in scale and in scope. Second, one of the great casualties of our decade of austerity is likely to be imagination – the sense that alternatives to this broken regime not only exist, but can be built by us. Of those predictions, it is too late to avert the first. Yet the second, I believe, can still be fought off. And for those desperate to preserve a spark of hope in a political system that feels so hopeless, let me suggest this: watch Preston.
Perhaps you already know something of the city. You may have read on these pages about its guerrilla localism, bringing tens of millions in public spending closer to home, so as to create more jobs and prosperity. How it has been praised by Jeremy Corbyn and how all the fuss prompted none other than Boris Johnson, the great silverback himself, to take a swipe at last autumn’s Tory conference: “I’m sure they’re an estimable bunch but Preston council are not the locomotive of the UK economy.” A jab swiftly parried by a study showing it to be most improved city in the UK.
The first fruits of this hard graft are there to see. Right outside the town hall is the new and award-winning covered market, a £4m contract filled almost entirely by local firms employing workers on the real living wage – public money that would otherwise in all likelihood have trickled down from Lancashire to firms headquartered in London and the south-east before no doubt winging their way offshore.
That’s the story so far, and for most councils it would amount to a good ending. Conference speeches, column inches, feet up. Not in Preston, as I discovered on a return visit last week. Instead, it is embarking on an even more radical adventure. First, we can exclusively reveal that the council is today launching a programme to incubate worker-owned cooperative businesses.
Think of it as a socialist Dragons’ Den. Using cash largely provided by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the city will fund and provide rent-free premises to 10 new firms owned and run by their workers. The scheme, worth up to £1m in cash and kind (compare that with the council’s annual budget of about £20m), will be run independently; and after their kickstart, the co-ops will be required to stand on their own two feet. Although given advice and expected to work together, none of the new enterprises will be told what to do.
The inspiration comes from Mondragón, in Spain’s Basque Country. What is today the world’s biggest cooperative began in the 1950s, after the devastation of the civil war. Now employing almost 80,000 workers, it ranks among the largest companies in Spain, runs a vast chain of supermarkets, and exports around the world. The employees are the bosses, and no one earns more than six times what anyone else does(at British housebuilder Persimmon, by comparison, ex-CEO Jeff Fairburn got paid over 3,000 times his most junior staff. Yet every venture has paid its way. Those are the same values that Julian Manley, heading Preston’s cooperative scheme, wants inculcated among the 10 new businesses. Within a decade, he hopes Preston will be a mini-Mondragón – a city that gave birth to an entirely new economy.
By the time the first co-ops are up and running, Preston’s council leader, Matthew Brown, also plans to launch a new people’s bank for the north-west. Its branches will be on high streets from the Wirral to Cumbria, and it will lend about £500m, of which one-third will go to small businesses in the region. Again, it will be run as a co-op, and with values that run entirely counter to the banking system that crashed in 2008. Rather than giving bonuses, making multinational deals and screwing over punters, it will aim to be local, trustworthy and very boring.
In Brown’s wood-panelled office hangs a Sex Pistols poster, while facing him every day is a portrait of Tony Benn. Yet for all the firebrandery pinned up on his walls, the council leader himself says the most radical things as mildly as one might ask whether you take milk and sugar. What’s his ultimate goal? “It’s about building an alternative to capitalism – a capitalism that has failed this city and this country.”
And while the words are muttered in the direction of his shoes, there’s no doubting Brown’s ambition. Even as other councils are scrapping or selling their most prized services and buildings, a small and often-overlooked city is building bold new institutions.
There is nothing special about Preston. It is as battered as anywhere else in England. It is just as starved of cash. After a decade of cuts, admits the councillor in charge of finances, Martyn Rawlinson, an aged couple with rats in their house will be waiting weeks for the city’s pest control to come out. So why not devote every penny, every minute of municipal resources to preserving services, rather than to these experiments? “Because this is about building something different and better for ourselves,” he says.
I fully expect some of these ideas to crash and burn. Others need to be improved. Preston hosts an annual carnival, its taxi drivers can speak Urdu, and its shop signs are often in Polski. Yet its new-model economy is, so far, white and male. But as Rawlinson argues, more of the same policies will produce more of the same failure. That knowledge, and the desire to act on it, is spreading elsewhere. It’s why Hartlepool wants to take a leaf out of Preston’s book, as does Labour’s candidate for North of Tyne metro mayor, Jamie Driscoll. It’s why Bristol and the south west are also looking at people’s banks while the Welsh government has just started to fund the idea of a foundational economy focused on locals’ needs such as social care, good schools and broadband I have previously discussed.
These are bleak times for anyone who wants a more progressive politics in Britain. We are hostages to a rightwing project, Brexit, that has failed before it has even launched. Our government bursts with chancers and buffoons who are incapable of chartering a ferry service. Yet it remains a country with the imagination to try new things and the fight to make them work. As I leave Manley, I ask if he is serious about building a new economy in his hometown. The co-ops of Mondragón, I point out, benefit from tax breaks and an entirely different political culture.
“Yes, they never had Thatcher,” Manley agrees. “But they had General Franco, and they built something new among bombed-out ruins. If they did that, why can’t we? It’s tough – so what?”
• Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist and senior economics commentator
In an era of brutal cuts, one ordinary place has the imagination to fight back | Aditya Chakrabortty | Opinion | The Guardian
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