Principles met

  • We will promote community-based approaches to economic development that focus on supporting the creation of jobs, social enterprises and other businesses and providing an environment for co-operative and mutual enterprises to thrive.
  • We will embrace innovation in how we work with local communities to drive positive change.
  • We will capture and ‘expand’ the experience and learning from individual projects and approaches in order to encourage broader application of co-operative principles within individual member Councils and across the Network.
  • In exploring new ways of meeting the priority needs of our communities we will encourage models, such as co-operatives and mutuals, which give greater influence and voice to staff and users. in designing and commissioning public services and in determining the use of public resources.
  • As a membership organisation, we will make this statement of our principles operational by: • Co-operation among members: Our members work together to help each other implement our values, sharing experiences and learning. • Openness of membership: Full, Associate and Affiliate Membership is open to any qualifying Council, organisation or individual who shares our values and is committed to putting them into action. • Co-production of the Network’s work: Members help shape the Network’s work programme and the content of events and written products. • Action-focused: The network is a vehicle for helping councils translate co-operative values and principles into policy and practice. •Membership-based: The network is majority funded by modest membership subscriptions from its member Councils, Associates and Affiliates. •Non-party-political: Members share the belief that working co-operatively within and across communities holds the key to tackling today’s challenges.

The Challenge

In 2014 a group of volunteers who were concerned about the escalating pace of the climate emergency and the injustice of energy and fuel poverty formed SELCE.

The SELCE model is simple; to produce, use and share energy, generated by cooperatively owned renewables, to serve energy-efficient buildings and to benefit our most vulnerable residents.

Solution

248 local residents have raised over £500,000 in community finance to support the installation of solar PV projects.

“Community Share Offers” encourage socially-minded investors to invest in solar and receive an annual dividend, whereby their investment is paid in full within 20 years. To date, their solar investment has avoided 59,703 kgCO2e.

The scheme has now been extended to include LED lighting retrofit, which is designed to help community buildings combat the increase in energy prices.

For further information contact: