• Lead Member Greenwich Royal Borough
  • Participating Members Greenwich Cooperative Development Agency, Greenwich Royal Borough
  • Year 2025
  • Status Prototype

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 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.

About the project

Working with the Greenwich Cooperative Delivery Agency (GCDA), we have identified the opportunity to undertake a proof of concept (POC) on the Woolwich Common estate in Royal Greenwich. Like many places, residents within Woolwich Common feel left behind, particularly following COVID, and also as a community, unloved. The estate also is an area which has a higher level of deprivation than others in the borough, and suffers higher levels of crime & anti-social behaviour (ASB).

Building on existing GCDA presence and infrastructure, the POC will look to improve feelings of safety and community ownership within the wider estate whilst also improving the look and feel of the area. We also hope to identify and develop employment & training opportunities for local people, whilst using this POC as a potential beacon of best practice for other estates within Royal Greenwich, if not wider.

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