 So, good afternoon and welcome to this high webinar is starting right for you. My name is Petra Morris and I work for Co-operators UK. So, I'm delighted to presenting this webinar this afternoon and I'll also be joined later on in the session by my colleague Deng Hall at Co-operators UK. So, before I say a little bit more about who we are and why we're having this high webinar just in terms of some quick housekeeping. This webinar is being recorded and it will be made available to everyone that's registered after the event and also be uploaded to the website. Because it's a webinar and no one's on camera and we've also muted everyone. So, if you do want to ask any questions you can put those in the chat and we can try and respond to those either in the chat or at the end of the session hopefully there's some time for Q&A and yep, so that's great. So, we'll get started. So, as I say, I'm Petra Morris. Co-operators UK is the national membership body that represents the thousands of co-operators across the UK and we're delighted to deliver this high webinar. It's part of a series of webinars that we've been delivering towards the end of last year and we'll continue into February. We've had webinars focused on different audiences from young people to freelancers to those looking at digital platform co-operators and community co-op coming up as well. And these webinars are part of our high business support program which is a program delivered by Co-operators UK in partnership with the Co-operative Bank and we're delighted to have been working with them over the last six years to support new co-operators and also existing co-operators and in that time we supported over a thousand co-operators. So, I'll talk a little bit more at the end of this session about what support is available through the Hive and also through Co-operators UK and our other funded programs and as I say towards the end of the session my colleague will also tell you about how to incorporate your co-operative and the different legal forms available. So in terms of this one-hour webinar session I'm going to hopefully tell you a little bit about what a co-operative is and I'll illustrate that with lots of examples of co-operatives and then as I say, Dane will talk to you about incorporating your co-operative and then we'll talk about how you can get further support. So without further ado, what is a co-operative? Well as it says here it's a group of people coming together to meet their common needs and it's a business that's owned and controlled and primarily for the benefit of its members and those members can be the customers, they can be the users, be the employees, they can be the community that they operate in or a combination of those things and the members that could be free in the co-operative or they could be free million so they range in size and nature and co-operatives are businesses but what makes them different from other businesses generally is that they're there to benefit the members membership is hard of every co-operative it's why they exist it's the purpose of the co-operative to serve those members and those members have a democratic say in how the co-operatives run and they are the owners and shareholders and members can invest in the co-operative but they shouldn't just invest to make money and the members decide what to do with the profits as businesses they do aim to make profits but it's how those profits are distributed and different in the co-operative so in a worker co-operative that might be about distributing the profits among the workers for a retail consumer society that might be giving dividends to the customers. The other thing that distinguishes a co-operative from any other business or charity is these principles these values and principles are enshrined in co-operatives worldwide and they're looked after by the international co-operative alliance and it's really what defines a co-operative if you can't demonstrate that you need these principles and essentially not operating as a co-operative so i'll just touch on some of these points and so the as i said before co-operatives are owned and controlled by their members and they have a democratic say in how the co-operative is run and members should have some kind of benefit and relationship with the co-operatives that has economic benefit co-operatives because they're acting on behalf of their members and they're owned by their members should be autonomous and independent organizations they are there to serve their members and this one around education and training is really important in order for members to make good decisions and be able to run their co-operative effectively they need the skills and training to be able to do that and so that's a big part of being a co-operative and it doesn't say it here but principle six as we call it is the idea of cooperation among co-operatives co-operatives support one another and they promote the co-operative model and concern for the community is a big part of co-operatives co-operatives generally are quite ethical businesses they care about the community they operate in and when i talk about some of the co-operatives out there you'll see how they have supported community particularly in this last couple of years with these difficult conditions in the pandemic and membership of co-operative is open and voluntary so you can't be forced to be members if you go into your local co-operative store you might be able to get your membership card and but you can also shop there if you're not a member so it is open and voluntary and so as i say this these principles and values and i haven't mentioned the values here but they're things like self self responsibility and honesty they really define the co-operative and and those values and principles i think are what make co-operatives a really good model and successful so talking about why you should start a co-operative and i know that some people on the webinar today may not be at the stage of starting a co-operative and some of you actually might be advisors or councils or people working with groups that might be thinking of a co-operative so here in this slide we're just looking at some of the reasons that we know that co-operatives are successful and co-operatives have been around for more than 175 years and so that in itself shows their longevity and and their success but we can see from our research that co-operatives have a better survival rate when they first start up compared to other businesses almost twice as many continued to trade after the first five years and they are very resilient and flexible and i'll say a little bit more about that in the next slide but i think the idea that people have control over the co-operatives and they have a say in how it's run makes you much more motivated you're much more likely to take part in how it can grow and and it boosts productivity and at the heart of the co-operatives as we saw in principles is the idea of doing good co-operative businesses are very much people businesses and they're trusted and they're there to support their members and often their community so i can't really do this presentation i wanted to avoid the c-word but we have been in this pandemic the last couple of years but what we have seen in terms of co-operative businesses that they have been much more resilient compared to other businesses and they've been four times less likely to cease trading in 2020 compared to businesses more generally and throughout the pandemic they've been much more ambitious and effective and continue to grow and increase and i think that's really again about the idea that they're there for their members they can be flexible they can pivot they're not in there for short-term profits and external shareholders and I think this demonstrates why co-operatives are so successful and are a good model so this slide really is just showing that co-operatives exist in all sectors of the economy everything from food and farming to retail and digital they operate at all different sizes and all together the 7 000 co-operatives contribute nearly 40 billion pound to the economy and UK economy and that has been rising every year and more and more co-operatives have been set up and certainly again during this last couple of years I think we've seen a more revived interest in co-operatives as a better more ethical business model that gives people control over their lives so co-operatives are collectively learned and they're democratically controlled and that's really key to what makes a co-operative different from any other business and co-operatives have continued to be relevant throughout the ages and from the very first co-operative store in Rochdale in 1844 through the 70s when there was high unemployment and continued to be relevant today and this next slide just talks a little bit more about that relevance and why we keep promoting co-operatives as hopefully better alternative so we know that there are lots of things that affect our daily lives and society and one of those is the access to decent and quality housing particularly for the younger generation we also can't have missed last year the emphasis on climate action and the need to take action and COP26 and this is not necessarily a negative point of view from the customer but at a click of a button everyone can order their food their taxis their travel but there can be a downside to that for the workers it's precarious work often not very well paid work so we at co-operatives UK and with our partners and with our co-archs and trying to find better alternatives and for instance there are hundreds of co-operatively owned housing out there affordable housing quality housing often very sustainable housing and it's not about just making short-term profits and investments we also have hundreds of community energy groups that are doing projects around hydro and solar and looking at saving the planet essentially and retrofit and and everything else and having a real impact on energy and through the Hive business support program we've been developing a program called unfound and this is helping new co-operatives to set up in the digital sector where the members are both the users of the services but also the workers that should be more ethical and more fair and so it's just really demonstrating that co-operatives are really trying to find better alternatives to the things that are important to us in our working lives and our lives more generally so in the next two slides I'm going to talk about some examples of co-operatives and I started this presentation by saying that co-operatives are owned by their members and they're there to serve their members and those members can be the customers the users the employees the community they operate in or a mix of those as in multi-stakeholder co-ops so these next slides I'm just going to talk about some examples of co-operatives and do their own buy and and why they were set up so I think I mentioned that started everybody's probably familiar with their cooperative convenience store and on their corner and may have their membership card and receive their dividends and Scott made co-operative is one of the largest independent co-operatives in Scotland and given the name and they've been going for 160 years and like many big retail consumer societies particularly in the last couple of years and through the pandemic they're there not only to serve their customers but also their communities so lots of our big consumer societies give funds to charities and help their communities so it's much more than just being a retail store but essentially they're they're owned by the customers and the members and they can be elected to councils and boards and have a say in how that cooperative is run so it's very democratic and the wine society in there just to say it's not all about convenient shopping and the cooperative stores and the wine society as it suggests is a wine club and they have 90,000 members they've been going for 130 years and I guess you get good bargains on the wine and which is distributed from all over the world so it's just a different example so on this next side I wanted to talk about worker co-operatives and lots of worker co-operatives and set up basically because the workers want to have fairer work and have more control over how they operate and they tend to be operated on fairly flat structures not much hierarchy and they tend to be quite successful as worker owned so there's a couple of worker co-operatives on this slide Unicorn Grocery celebrated 25 years last year in 2021 they are a whole food store just outside of Manchester in Chiltern they've grown their turnover now to 8 million pound and they have just over 60 employees and they're worker owners and so they all take different roles in the store not just on you know in the retail part but they might be involved in management and websites and everything else so it's really about the workers having those risk roles and responsibilities and then hopefully reaping the rewards of a successful co-operative and just to say that not all co-operatives are about food and retail and in fact digital are a small worker co-op that we helped to set up through the high business support program and they're based in London and they're sending that free members and they provide services around websites and digital and they really wanted to come together as a co-operative they were kind of working on that flat structure anyway but the co-operative formalized that and they feel much more confident in the way they work now much more motivated now that they are a worker co-operative so there's hundreds of examples of worker co-operatives we can't touch on them all but essentially what they have in common is that idea of democratic control less hierarchy and really doing business on a much fairer basis and again we've seen in the pandemic that you know some big businesses have been very quick to make people redundant and this is called quite precarious out there and so having that control and security in a worker co-op is really important so I touched on the fact that there are these digital platforms out there that allow us all to get access to services on in a digital way click of a button and these are two examples of co-operatives that have set up to be much more ethical and reduce those inequalities and in the services that are provided and also for the workers and they work you know as a digital co-op so signalize is a co-operative again that this both of these were supported through the hive and the members are the deaf interpreters and translators and also the community that benefit from from those services and generally in that sector the translators would be working through agencies and you know again work could be quite precarious and the quality was never at the forefront so having a co-operative where both our members means that they can do that in much better way and do that democratically equal care co-operative similarly they set up about four years ago and they are providing social care and again both the caregivers and care receivers are members of that co-operatives and they can kind of co-produce and how the businesses run and make it much more effective so these are just again different examples of how co-operatives can be set up they're really flexible models and you know you can have lots of different kinds of members that all care about how the businesses run so I'm just going to very quickly touch on housing and I mentioned before that there are lots of co-operative housing lilac is an example in Leeds it's very sustainable housing and that's owned by the members and it's been very successful and they have about 20 eco-builds and been going for about 15 years it's just another example of the type of co-operative that can be set up and student co-operative homes is a sort of federal body for any students that want to have access to more affordable accommodation we often see that students are in the hands of private landlords and rents can be quite high so this is just a way of allowing you know students access to better quality accommodation they can control and also gives them access to life skills and business skills in running that co-operative so moving on this is an example another example of the types of co-operatives that can be set up these are what we call community co-operatives and when my colleague talks to you about legal forms generally most of these will be set up as what we call community benefit societies as the name suggests they're set up to benefit their local communities so I'm going to talk about one of those which is actually my co-operative and so when I'm not at Cocters UK I'm also a member and a board member of volunteer at Friends of Stratford Public Hall and this is a beautiful grade two listed building just outside of Manchester and we took ownership of this building from the council back in 2015 and it's now owned by the investor members there are 800 of them in Stratford and in 2015 sorry in 2017 we ran something called a community share offer and I'll say a little bit more about that in the next slide but essentially it's a way that members of a society or the co-operative can raise funds to allow them to do the things that they want to do it's patient capital and by raising these funds we were able to renovate ballroom and the hall is used for all kinds of activities and community events well-being weddings you name it so it's just an example of a co-operative that's there to serve the community that it's operating in and the other end of the scale and the bell in the bath is a pub with live music which is taken over by the community when it was going to close and again they did a share offer in order to do that and are owned by their members so these are just examples different examples of co-operatives and sorry what I should have said as well about Friends of Stratford Public Hall is that idea of co-operatives being flexible and being able to change how they operate so in the last couple of years with the lockdowns and everything else we've not been able to be open to the public for events but we have pivoted as a mutual aid organisation and have supported the local community and food banks and other support so I just want to very briefly touch on community shares just mind-blowing the time so community shares is a unique way of societies of co-operatives raising funds people can buy shares and they can't trade them they can't sell them but you can potentially earn some interest on them and you can withdraw them at some point it's almost like making a donation but by buying shares you then have some democratic say in how the co-operative is is run so lots of communities across the country hundreds of them have saved their local assets or their services by raising funds through community shares and that figure is now to date I think it's now 180 million have been raised from investors from over 100,000 investors and we have another program called community shares booster program that supports people who are looking to do a community share offer so that gives you an introduction and an overview of the lots of different types of co-operatives and how they're owned by their members and why they've set up their co-operatives all for different reasons and motivations so just to summarise co-operatives are businesses they do aim to make profits but how they distribute those profits might be different they operate to a set of principles and there are lots of different types of co-operatives not only by sector but by how they are owned by their members so if you're thinking of starting a co-operative it's much the same as starting any business hopefully you're you either have an idea that you think will work or an opportunity so again with friends at Stratford Public Hall because the building was going to be sold by the council there was an opportunity for the community to come along and take ownership so sometimes it's just an opportunity but sometimes it's just the fact that you want to have some control over your work and run your business yourself and such as with in fact digital and what we would recommend of course is that if you think you have a solution to a problem you need to test that out and check the feasibility and make sure that that is the case and you need to think about do you have the skills and motivation and the capacity to take this forward and is what you're proposing better than whatever people are doing so much the same as any other business in that sense but then obviously you need to think about who your members are going to be and why they're going to benefit and be part of your co-operative and that's particularly important because a lot of businesses are just set up by a sole trader and then they might take on staff and they can make all those decisions but in a co-operative because there's more of you you really need to agree that collective vision which everyone buys into and that collective vision is you know first and foremost what the co-operative is about rather than your own needs as a member and that vision leads to the objects and those objects are important because that will then determine what's in your governing document and yeah so once you've got that agreed you can think about setting up your co-operative and then think about what what the equal structure that might be so I'm just looking at it so this slide is really helpful because all of those things I talked about about before in terms of setting up your co-operative and testing your idea and thinking about how to raise funds and doing your business plans we have a very helpful step-by-step guide on our website and that takes you through all those processes and sorts of templates and resources and then eventually you can also register your co-operative so I think that's essentially where my part of the presentation finishes and I'm going to hand over to my colleague Dane Parlard from Co-operative UK who's going to take you through the legal forms and then hopefully there'll be some questions that have been put in chat I can't see the chat that we can respond to at the end or take those questions at the end so I will be moving the slides on for Dane as we go along excuse me so over to you Dane thanks very much thank you Petra I can see before I start I can see Vanessa raised their hand earlier so Vanessa if you want mine put in your question or your comment in the chat we'll answer that for you as soon as we can and ideally we'll answer all the questions at the end and just in case we cover some of the bits that you may be asking the question oh she said it was an error so no problem okay thank you so thank you Petra as she said my name is Dane Parlard and I work in the advice team here at Coach UK we're a relatively small team but we do cover a wide range of skills and experience mostly in governance and HR advice and my role specifically is primarily to assist new organizations incorporate and this involves discussions around legal forms and structures which is why I'm here doing this part today so the first slide for me please Petra we're going to start right at the beginning of the journey which is basically to incorporate or not most co-ops do incorporate but there are circumstances where remaining unincorporated is actually most appropriate certainly for the short term so what does incorporation mean when the corporation means creating a legal identity for an organization that is distinct from its members it then becomes a corporate body and as the slide says there it then limits the personal liability of you members and directors and it's the legal entity which is a person in the eyes of the law that takes on any risk for the organization if you remain unincorporated your organization is is more informal in the eyes of the law which means the law will see you cooperative as a collection of people and not a legal entity in its own right which means the organization itself can't enter into contracts because it doesn't officially exist and it's more difficult to give members authority to enter into those contracts on the organization's behalf and liability to the directors is joint and several and is unlimited and that means that these liabilities might not be shared equally among the members as well and it's often those who have the ability to pay are the ones pursued more for the payment of any debts it's worth saying here as well that contractual liability will ultimately rest on those who have authorized the contract so for instance if a committee member was to enter into a contract and the contract was authorized by the management committee each committee member would be held liable under the terms of the contract should something go wrong if a committee member acts on their own without the authorization of the committee then they can be held personally liable obviously incorporation creates limited liability but a director can still be held liable if they act outside of the authority of the board when you do incorporate it means that your business with house specific rights and duties to follow you become a legal entity under a particular act a piece of legislation with a regular body such as the company's house and that would be the company's act 2006 and what this means is you will have startup fees more likely and if you're doing it yourself you know they might be quite minimum but if you get someone to help you do the whole startup process you'll obviously have to pay for that service as well you'll then have to keep and file records with the appropriate registrar and make certain details public such as registered addresses and board and director names so when should you incorporate well if you plan to own property or enter in significant contracts such as employment contracts if you undertake significant trade or you need to own significant assets or you just want to limit the personal liability of the members for debts and things like that the legal entity then takes on that risk being unincorporated though might suit your co-op if you have a more informal setup and your exposure to risk is minimal and the advantages of remaining unincorporated are there are generally no limit or limited startup or annual costs and you don't need to declare any details with public registers and there's very little admin really apart from you know what you need to do on a day-to-day basis for your business if you want to explore more around legal forms and structures we do have a helpful publication called Simply Legal and you can download that from our step-by-step guide that Petra mentioned earlier and in particular it's step 5.1 and it's also important to say that you shouldn't rush into incorporation if there is no need to at present some businesses can start off informally and take along quite nicely without the need for big contracts or employees or anything like that there are pros and cons to incorporation and Simply Legal goes into a bit more detail for those as well. A couple of highlights just to mention though is the admin factor and the privacy factor so more admin once incorporated and less privacy but when the time is right make the change and you'll have a better idea of what your co-op will look like too if you've been sort of trading informally for a short while. Move to the next slide please Petra thank you so we'll focus on the incorporation side of it now and once you've made the decision to incorporate you're going to go through a series of other decisions to make really so if you want to be a cooperative you need to decide your co-op structure which is what Petra was talking about earlier the different types of co-op do you know who your members are going to be and do you know what their relationship will be with the co-op so Petra mentioned quite a few types of co-ops there and you can have many many different types of co-ops really even within those sort of categories that was mentioned there are different structures of those so it's important that you pick something that is going to suit you and the business and your members the best you're going to need a business model and a business plan and the co-op needs to have that business behind it if you want to be a successful co-op you need to be an established and hopefully successful business as well so what is your mission and vision why are you starting the business in the first place what need is there out there that you'll be addressing and possibly most importantly for the sustainability of the business where's your income coming from where's the capital coming from will you be reliant on trading income or grants or loans and especially at start up what do you need to get things off the ground including those registration costs then you'll decide on the legal form that suits you and your needs research all the different ones and I'll go through a few of them in a bit and pick again pick the one that suits you needs best in the UK co-operatives don't have a single legislation that covers them so what that means is it's the governance layer which makes you a cooperative and for that reason you can be an illegal form once you've chosen your legal form you'll want to draft or adopt constitution and if you want to be a cooperative you'll need those cooperative values and principles entrenched in that constitution so when you get your governing document sorted think again about what you need to be successful and co-op UK has model constitutions that will suit all legal forms and again you can find examples of those and you can download them on our step-by-step guide and then once you've done all that you need to make your application to the relevant registrar so depending on what legal form you've chosen there might be a different registrar and again we'll touch on that in a minute. Co-operatives UK does have a registration service that is currently being subsidized by the co-op bank and as part of that service we will help draft the constitution prepare the application form and liaise with the registrar on your behalf till that co-op is registered and we'll even add in membership to co-operatives UK at no extra cost should you wish to join us you can start that journey if you want to at step six of that step-by-step guide which we've already mentioned how useful it is there's almost everything on there that you'll need and at the moment the is a flat fee of £150 for a new registration so it's really good value for money. Next slide please Petra thank you so we'll start with the last point on the previous slide which is about the legal forms and as I mentioned the co-op can be any legal form so it is important to have a look at the differences between them and find what you need some things will require a certain legal form but in some cases it will be down to personal preference or choice so the main legal forms that we see are on the screen here some of the ones we don't see as much but companies by guarantee and shares are probably slightly more familiar to those who aren't in the cooperative sector and the other main legal forms that we see with co-ops are cooperative societies, community benefit societies and some of those community benefit societies are charitable as well. Other legal forms which can still be cooperative or have cooperative values and principles involved are the the kit companies the community interest companies again limited by guarantee or shares, CIO which is a charitable cooperative organisation, a limited liability partnership which can still be a cooperative and PLC which is is rare to be a co-op but technically it could be if you wanted to. So things to think about when you're choosing your legal form is what type of business your co-op will carry out, who the members of the co-op will be and their interaction with the co-op as well, how will you fund the co-op certainly at the startup stage, what will co-op do with any profit it makes and what will the co-op do with its assets if it winds up. Next slide please Petra so we'll go into a slightly more detail but I will it will be a whistle stop tour here because obviously we don't have the most amount of time today and it can be a complicated structure set up as well but if you do want to ask any further questions feel free to email advice at uk.coop or like we said visit our step by step guide. So at first glance this probably does look a little complicated but don't worry too much it's an illustration of how all the legal forms are interlinked and how they differ. For example on the top you can see the legislation for those particular legal forms are registered under and we have the companies act over there on the left which is probably the most familiar and then the cooperative and community benefit society act 2014 and at the end there's a limited liability partnership. So companies the more familiar one they are limited by guarantee or shares usually non-co-ops will just probably register a company that's by shares even if there's only one or two directors there. We often see cooperatives use the guarantee model more but the differences are the guarantee model means that all the members guarantee a certain amount which is usually a pound and in the event of the company being wound up that was what they would contribute to the outstanding debts. Private company limited by shares means the liability of the shareholders to the creditors is their capital that they've invested so the nominal value of the shares and any premium paid in return for the issue of those shares by the company so all their shareholding essentially. There is a PLC on there as well like we said but we don't see that and that's more like your larger firms on the stock exchange. So moving on to the societies there under the cooperative and community benefit societies act they are corporate bodies in exactly the same way companies are but they're registered under that different act and they are administered by the financial conducts authority who are registrars as opposed to sort of regulators so they do have certain powers but they mostly just register and keep the records of societies. You can register as a society as a cooperative society or a community benefit society as the act suggests. The cooperative society form is used by cooperatives obviously and to meet the conditions for registration the FCA state that society must be an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned enterprise which essentially is everything that Petri described earlier but into a nice long sentence for you and the cooperative alliance the international cooperative alliance have written that statement as well. Community benefit society legal form is more common amongst the community owned businesses so community courts and other forms of voluntary and community activity where the emphasis there is on the wider community rather than the individual members of the society. The community benefit society also has the option of adding an asset lock which also community interest companies must have and an asset lock is designed to ensure that the assets of the organization which are profits and services generated by activities as well are used for the benefit of the community and unwind up it means that any remaining assets must be given to another asset locked organization usually with similar objectives and what that means is just so that the members don't necessarily take the assets on a wind up on a dissolution and once you put an asset lock into the constitution it can't be removed so any new businesses should really think about the advantage and disadvantage of doing that before you register. As I said we also have LLP's there which can be as little as two people which can still act cooperatively but if they want to be a partnership which is usually more for profit making activities you can still be a cooperative and do that. The community interest company which we also mentioned is similar to the community benefit society in that the emphasis is on the the wider community in the public and again they will have the asset lock in it's not a choice with this one it's compulsory with the cbs it's a choice. The kick company as well has to pass the community interest test which is the kick regulator who will judge what your activities are and to make sure that they actually do benefit the the community and then the the CIOs are in there as well but but we don't often see those as co-ops even though you could act cooperatively under there. So the last thing I want to mention on this particular slide is the the circles on the right hand side there with the cooperative and the community benefit societies. This means that you can issue withdrawable share capital and issuing share capital in a society is optional. Societies are limited by shares in their nature so you have to have a minimum of one share but it is optional to add into the governing document to issue more shares and this type of shares withdrawable by the member and subject to conditions stated in the rules and any share off document. There's no requirement to specify an amount of share capital on the registration it can be as many or as little as you like and societies have some exemptions from the financial services and markets act 2000 which include exemptions for covering the approval of financial promotions which again can reduce costs of share issues and can allow you to widely advertise share issues. It is still risk capital though and despite the exemptions the FCA will expect a society to provide appropriate information regarding any risk to potential members who are investing in the society. You can pay interest on these shares however that interest must be set at a rate that the FCA described as necessary to obtain and retain enough capital to run the business so it can't be seen as a money making opportunity basically. People investing usually do so in societies for socially motivated or philanthropic reasons rather than the prospect of financial return and certainly something the FCA do what closely as well on application. There's lots more to talk about with with drawable shares but you should probably visit our community shares unit pages on our website on our website UK.coop and there is a community chef handbook on there which has got a really useful function a search function to find specific topics and of course you can email the community shares unit for more information too. The last slide from my section Petra is basically a pros and cons list which again as I said earlier it can be a down to personal choice but there are certain reasons why you might go for one form over the other. I've kept it to companies and societies here because they are the two main ones that we see and this is a really quick example. There'll be more on each side of those tables I'm sure and through lived experience you probably find more but these are just the ones that stick out really so the regulatory report in there with a society is well it's easier to register with a society you should say first sorry not a society company it's easier to register with a company because it's quicker and essentially companies house will just register you if you are submitting the right documents whereas a society the FCA do look at your business plan sort of thing they want to know what you're doing as a co-op or community benefit society first. There is more admin on a company's house because you have to update companies house every time you change directors for example and other things like that whereas with a society you just update the FCA once a year in your annual returns. The company is a more recognised legal form generally out there so banks and insurance people sort of the established agents that you might see and funders they seem to be more familiar with the company model however that's not to say the society model isn't known it's just not known in certain circles as well and what that does sometimes is pose a problem because people aren't willing to explore what the society model is they just have a flat response so it can be more difficult to get certain things done but you should be able to get everything done unless the terms and conditions of that particular organisation say they don't support societies and the company has a slightly more prescriptive legislation as well which can be a good thing it can be a bad thing on the one hand it backs up all the the sort of terms and conditions around being a company but on the other hand it means you know it's written there so you have to do it whereas a society has a lot of legislation that you have to follow but then if it doesn't specifically say something then it's up to the rules to then define that so it can be easier to function on a day-to-day basis for the board sometimes although on big issues it tends to fall back on the company law anyway so you have to be careful with someone as well and finally it's it's more difficult to demutrileise a society but if you have entrenched your provisions into a company you can make that quite difficult as well so that's that's down to the the constitution really and that's about it in general there and so I think Petra I'll hand back to you and then see if we've got any questions from anyone coming in. Thanks very much Dane that's a great overview of whether you should incorporate and the different models that are available I think the key takeaway from that is that you can essentially be any legal form and still be a cooperative it's really the values and principles that make you a cooperative and say the decision on the legal model is based on what kind of business you're running and the purpose of it and who you think your members might be and so I just wanted to flag this starter cop step-by-step guide again because you can go through all of those and help you decide what would be the best ownership model and therefore the best legal structure and then at number six that's where you can actually register your cooperative and that subsidize fee of £150 which also gives you access to membership of co-optors UK that's useful and so thanks Dane that's a really comprehensive overview of the legal structures and so I'm just going to finally talk about the next steps and the way you can get more support so if you are thinking of setting up a cooperative or maybe you're an existing business that wants to convert to a cooperative and this is where you can get support the high business support program and I think we have links in the chat as well where click on this is our program that's delivered by cooperatives UK and partnership in the cooperative bank you can apply for up to 10 days of consultancy support mentoring and training to help those early days of setting up the cooperative or convert your business and that's you know a competitive application process and that's open all the time for you to apply you can also get support from our advice team at cooperatives UK and we do lots of training as well around HR and finance and governance and so check out our training sessions and the advice team are there also to help you on your journey to register your your cooperative as to say cooperatives UK are a registration body and we mentioned as well the community shares unit and we also have a fund called community shares booster program for anyone thinking you're doing community share offer and there's lots of resources and support on on that website as well so all of those links hopefully have been posted in the chat but you can also email us anything else so I think that kind of completes completes the presentations this this link is is really a useful link you can go on that and all of our funding programs for new startup cooperatives are on there and lots of resources so do check that out so I'm just going to look to my colleagues to see if we've had any questions and yeah and then see if we can answer them and we've got about just checking the time about 10 minutes left so we'll try and pick up any of those questions that were posted in the chat and if you still want to have some questions you can continue to post those in the chat and we'll either pick those up now or we can come back to you after the session so we've got a few Petra so hopefully we'll get through as much of these as possible so Nadine asked that some members will be of a potential court will be vulnerable as maybe survivors of domestic abuse for example and the question is do the names need to be shown with company's house which is their safety so if they're a director and Nadine of the co-op of the company they they will have their name on company's house if they're a member you don't have to have the members register on company's house so you can keep that private so worth thinking about there there's similarly with the FCA if you register a society you don't necessarily have the director's names on the mutuals register but they will have to be in the annual return so you can find them effectively through a downloadable PDF but they're more hidden than they are with the company but I would say if there are people vulnerable who just don't want the name out there at all then maybe try and not have them as directors even though that might not be the route they want to take I hope that answers there. Tom asks what are the best ways to find a technical co-founder preferably someone open to the cooperative business structure for a digital platform co-op I think Tom there don't Petra if you'd agree but I think yeah you can I was going to say I think you probably want want someone with you at the beginning really to start a co-op but Petra do you know of any anywhere that they can maybe collaborate and hopefully find like-minded people? Yeah so if it's particularly in the digital sector we have something called COTECH stands for cooperative technologies it's kind of a network of members if you like who are in that area of tech for good and we can share that that link maybe afterwards but yeah you could search for COTECH so that would be a good way to engage with people with similar ideas too most of them are cooperatives themselves but they definitely are kind of in that mode of tech for good and you know wanting to do digital work in that sense but yeah just use things like I always suggest new groups maybe use Facebook or Instagram or whatever and social media to kind of see what the interest is and reach out to people in that way but but yeah it's always best to start with at least a couple of you initially to get going does that sort of fit with what you were saying as well? Yeah I think so maybe sort of start finding people in a similar field first that you know you might do the same work with and then speak to them about the cooperative model because they might never have heard of it before so perhaps trying to find someone interested in the co-op model might be more difficult than trying to tell someone about the co-op model so if you find someone who's in the same sector and doing the same work as you you know mention it and see what they say but hopefully you find someone Tom and we hear from you soon but as I said will the slides be shared I believe we're going to share the slides are we Petra? Yeah so these recorded slides will be shared and they'll also be uploaded to the website and so people can view them later. Naomi says what's the registration cost difference between a company and society? Naomi if you come in via co-operatives UK there's no difference so because the co-op bank are subsidising all the fees at the moment it's it's a flat 150 to everybody and that includes statutory fees and VAT and that as well the only reason that would increase from co-op UK is if it became overly complicated or attracted or you wanted to make more than six changes to our governing documents. If you do it yourself there's a huge difference in cost and you effectively can register a company in the next 20 minutes on company's house for about £12 whereas if you went to the FCA firstly it would take you a bit longer but you'd also cost you £950 because you're not using a sponsoring body who's already pre-written that model governing document that constitution so yeah we would always say come to co-op UK because obviously we draft these documents and we know how to change them to suit your needs if that's necessary as well but with a company you can technique to do it yourself if you like but yeah the society where you'll save you a lot of money coming through us. Tiago I hope that's how I pronounce it as said from your experience what are the biggest failure points for co-ops Petra? Gosh that's a big big question. That's why I said you. Yeah I mean I suppose what what I was saying earlier in my presentation is that co-ops has actually demonstrated that they're much more resilient and long-standing and their success rate is actually higher and less you know particularly in the last couple of years it's overseas trading. I suppose it's like any business that's set up you know businesses are set up by people people can fall out and a lot of the advice that we give at co-ops is UK it's around how you govern your co-optive and how you do your collective decision making and because you know it is democratic and it's not just one person making those decisions so we do provide lots of resources and training around that so that you can effectively run your co-operative and I suppose from a business point of view you know like any other business a business can fail if it can't get the funding if what it's delivering you know doesn't meet the needs of the people it's delivering for you know all the usual reasons but what we have found is because co-operatives you know do this collectively and they have more than one person they can kind of share those risks as well as the rewards and make it more successful but yeah there's you know it's not to say that co-operatives don't fail but they probably fail on the same reasons that any other business would fail is that a fair response? Yeah I think so I would agree. Jeff thank you for reminding me there there is a secure register on companies house for those who don't want their names there so apologies about that we've yeah we don't register as many companies as we do societies and that won't slip my mind so yeah I think in answer to the question earlier you should be able to find a way to be a director and not have your name visible but we're more than happy to look into that for you if you came through our services and see how that how that works. So we had a couple more questions quickly. Stan said looking stuff was a sole trader but can I build it in setting up co-op as part of the business plan as would like to make it social enterprise you can absolutely build it into your business plan Stan I would say if you're going to be a sole trader at the moment you possibly don't need to fully incorporate as a company or society depending on what you want to do because if you wanted your constitution to have cooperative values and principles in it you're likely to need a minimum of two people for that to actually not be in breach of your own constitution immediately so by all means set up as a sole trader and have a business plan that says you know within six 12 months or whatever you want the people involved to become members of course membership is open and voluntary as as Petra said so you'd have to get like-minded people I suppose on board but by all means have it as an ultimate aim you know and review that aim as you go along absolutely. Liam said having worked for both large and small production companies I'm exploring the options of setting up a media production company however there seems to be a lack of organisations as co-ops are there in many examples we can provide Petra do you know any media production companies off the top of your head who might be co-ops? Yeah it depends what you mean by media production but yeah certainly in membership we have lots of digital and creative co-ops and blade counts our filmmakers I think there's one in Scotland so yeah we can most certainly put you in touch with existing co-opters in fact the sort of where we have most applications to the high tend to be in the digital creative media sector and so lots of them do set up as worker cards so yeah I'll definitely find some examples for you and share those with you. Brilliant I think that's about it really. Jeff hopefully posted a link so thanks again Jeff for highlighting that one if anyone else has got a question quickly jot it in there or just type yes while you're typing the question but I think we're about done on there I can't see any more Petra that we've missed. Yeah sorry I'm looking at the chat as well now so yeah so as I said if we will share the recording and we're also saying the email one of the things I'm offering is if anybody wants to have a short call with me if they have something in mind and they need a bit more help before they maybe apply or think of setting up their co-optive that's something I can arrange but do look at the step by step guide and the startup pages and everything you need is there so I hope you found today's webinar useful it obviously didn't cover everything you need to know about setting up your co-optive but hopefully it's a good introduction and as say there's lots of support either at the end of an email or call or on our website and if you want to take it any further and so if there doesn't appear to be any more last questions I think we'll we'll close it there and thanks very much for everyone's time and for attending and good luck with your journeys if you're on them thanks very much