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Members’ Update – March 2025
- 6th Mar 2025
Meeting many of you in Woolwich at my first Annual Conference was a pleasure and a privilege. Woolwich Works provided a glorious backdrop for the event, and I want to thank Cllr Anthony Okereke and his team, who worked so hard to ensure the event was a success. Most delegates have said that this event exceeded expectations, the deadline to respond to the post-conference survey is 7 March. In this issue, we share some of the presentations, photos and takeaways from the 2025 Annual Conference held in Woolwich including the Cooperative Tour notes used by Victoria Geoghegan from the Royal Borough Greenwich. We also have the post-conference report recently featured in the Coop News.
We were delighted that Greenwich decided to launch their Cooperative Commission at our Annual Conference. There are more details on that, and our Policy Lab ‘Tackling the Barriers to Building a Cooperative Economy’ led by Oldham Council with support from Cliff Mills from Anthony Collins below. My particular highlight from the presentation from Terry Galloway who shared his lived experience of growing up in the care system and encouraged CCIN Members to treat ‘Care Experience’ as a protected characteristic in Equality Impact Assessments. I look forward to doing more on this in the coming months.
I want to thank Cllrs Jacky Alty, Shanika Mahendran, and John Cotton, who joined me at a CCIN Workshop at the Labour Local Conference on 9 February, where we discussed ‘How Cooperative Councils can support the Government’s Missions’.
In other news, we’ve already received six ideas for Policy Lab Bids for this year’s funding round. All the details on how to get involved are included in this edition. The deadline for submissions is 5pm Thursday, 13 March.
We’ve extended the deadline for submissions for the 2025 Case Studies Pack to Thursday, 17th April, so they can be printed in time for our in-person events. This is free publicity for your council, cooperative and community-led projects – do please make the most of this opportunity.
Finally, I’d like to welcome Stockport Labour Group, Ikigai and South East London Chamber of Commerce.
I hope you enjoy this edition of Update.
Best wishes
Jim
