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Members’ Update – November 2025

  • 7th Nov 2025

Thank you to everyone who’s paid their invoice for Membership fees for 2025/6. Colleagues at Oldham Council have ensured that all invoices were sent before the end of October, and we’ve requested that these be settled by the end of December. This month, we have Governance meetings of the Finance and General Purposes Group and the Executive Oversight Committee. We've also funded places at the Democratic Business Summit in Glasgow on 3 November – thank you to those who requested places. Our final conference of the year will be the Co-operative Party Annual Conference in London on 15-16 November.

We’ve two online events planned before Christmas: a session on the Councils’ Coop Development Toolkit, which will be led by Kirklees Council, and a session on Community-Led housing, which we’re running with the Confederation of Co-operative Housing.  It’s been over eight years since we launched our Community-Led Housing Commission report in Westminster in 2018 and with the Govt’s commitment to build homes it’s a good time to find out more.  Please look out for mailings over the coming weeks to book your place.
 
In this edition, and as promised last month, we’ve got an update from the LGA on permitted development rights.
 
We’ve made significant progress on the CRM system, but a third of full member councils have not yet confirmed their data for the new system.  We’ve taken the bold step to name those councils that are still to respond. If your name is on the list, please action today.
 
Congratulations to Cllr Bradley Arnold – Halewood Town Council, David Randall – Crystalisr and Gareth Nash – Cooperative and Mutual Solutions representing the worker coop sector who join us on the Values & Principles Board. 

Our video this month is from Co-operatives UK which showcases work across different sectors, ownership models and communities: Owned by our Members.  We hope you enjoy it.
 
Finally, we’d like to welcome two new members of the Network: Middlesbrough Council and Tamworth Borough Council.  We are delighted to hear from Chris Cooke, the Mayor of Middlesbrough, this month and look forward to hearing from Tamworth BC in the next edition.
 
I hope that you enjoy this edition of Update.

Best wishes

Jim
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