 So good afternoon and welcome to this high webinar on how co-operatives can empower communities. I'm delighted you can join us this afternoon for this session. I'm Petra Morris and I work at co-operatives UK and I'm delighted today to bring you this session along with Lancaster City Council and we'll also be joined today for this presentation by Chris Coates who works for a co-operative and founder member of a co-operative who will talk about his experience. So before I go into a few more introductions and I also welcome Daniel Clark from Lancaster City Council just a few housekeeping things. This webinar is being recorded and it will be uploaded and the link will be shared after the session so don't worry about taking notes and things it will be available. Because it's a webinar participants don't have the camera on and we don't have audio. So if you do want to ask any questions as we go along in the session please post those in the chat at the bottom of your screen. We'll also be posting useful links in the chat as we go along and hopefully we'll have time at the end of the session to answer any questions. So as I say my name is Petra Morris and the reason we're delivering this high webinar is that it's delivered by co-operatives UK. We are the UK wide network that represents the thousands of co-operatives across the UK. And as a membership organization we provide all kinds of services and advice and we also support the setup of new co-operatives. And one of the ways we do that is through the high business support program. It's a national program delivered in partnership with our member of the co-operative bank. We're delighted that they've supported us this last six years and we've supported about a thousand co-operatives over that time with consultancy advice and workshops such as this and training etc. And we've been running these webinars towards the end of last year and into this year and these are also all available on our website as recordings. And so we have webinars on digital co-operatives and webinars about co-operatives that are in worker owned and freelancers as well as young people and some other general webinars that talk a little bit about more in terms of legal status etc. So I'm going to hand over now, I'm going to stop sharing my screen for the moment and I'm really delighted to welcome to this webinar our partners at Newt Lancaster City Council. I'm going to hand over to Daniel Clark who looks after their community wealth building work at Lancaster City Council and they're going to say a little bit more about what they're doing around that agenda. So I will stop sharing now and hand over to Daniel Clark, thank you, and we seem to have lost Daniel, sorry. So shall I go back to sharing? Sorry Daniel are you there? You seem to have lost him. Okay, I'm going to continue and hopefully he'll join us in a moment. I'm just going to check the chat to see what's happened there. So I'm sorry about that, we seem to have lost Daniel, hopefully he can join us again in a moment. So I'll continue and just talk about what we, sorry, what we're on full screen, what we'll be talking about in this session. So I'm going to introduce what a co-operative is. I'm also going to talk about some examples of co-operatives, one of which is I'm a member of, and we'll touch, I'll touch very briefly on registering your co-operative, and we'll also talk about the support available if you are thinking about setting up a co-operative. I know that there are people online currently that aren't just groups setting up, but also anchor organizations, local people from the local authority and other local authorities, and just people interested in learning more about co-operatives. So I'm going to start with just talking about what a co-operative is. So very basically a co-operative is a group of people working together to meet their common needs, co-operatives are businesses, and what makes them different from other enterprises is that they're owned by their members who control the co-operative and have a say in how it's run. So co-operatives can be owned by their workers, their customers, the community they serve, or a combination of those and some co-operatives may only have three members, as in typically maybe a worker co-operative, or millions of members. So membership is very much at the heart of every co-operative, it's the purpose that co-operatives are set up for, it's what drives the purpose and how the co-operative is run. And so as I mentioned, a co-operative might be set up by a group of workers who just want better livelihoods and fair working conditions and to have more control over their working lives. So co-operatives could be set up by the local community because they want to take on assets and services and run them the way that serves them best. And or it can be just as it could just be you as a customer maybe going into your local co-operative convenience store and shopping there. So there's lots of ways to be a member and lots of reasons why people set up co-operatives, which we'll talk about in this presentation. Co-operatives can be the owners and shareholders and they can invest in the co-operative, but that shouldn't be the primary aim to make money. Members, because co-operatives are businesses, they do make profits, but it's how those profits are distributed in the co-operative, which is different to other co-ops. So for instance, in a worker co-operative, if they make profits, they may distribute that evenly across the members or if it's a community co-op, it might go back into the services and the assets and the community they're serving. And most importantly, because co-operatives are owned by their members, members have a say and a control in how that co-operative is run. So what really defines a co-operative and makes it different from other businesses or social enterprises are these values and principles. And these are values and principles that are enshrined in co-operatives across the whole world, not just in the UK. And we have an organization called the International Co-operative Alliance that sort of looks after these principles and checks that co-operatives are meeting those principles. So I'm very briefly going to touch on each of these principles. And these are important because if co-operatives aren't working to these principles and essentially they probably are not a co-operative, so they are really important. And I suppose the first thing to say about these principles is that membership is open and voluntary. So again to use the scenario of going into your local co-op shop, you can shop there even if you decide not to be a member, it is voluntary and open. Democratic member control, as we mentioned before, because co-operatives are owned by their members, they have a say in how it's run. And member economic participation, that's really again going back to the idea that you can invest, you can get rewards, you get the benefits of the co-operative and how it's run. Or you can earn interest or dividends. And because co-operatives are there to run and therefore their members, they are independent organizations and they're there for the purpose of their members. Education and training is really important for members to make those decisions and about how the co-operative is run, they need the skills and information to do that. So education is a big part of co-operatives. As is co-operation among co-operatives, the idea that we support one another and we promote co-operatives. And finally, concern for the community, nearly all co-operatives operate in their communities and they support them. And social impact and social value is usually a big part of being a co-operative. So we know that co-operatives are successful. Co-operatives have been around for a very long time, more than 175 years, not that far from Lancaster. Rochdale was the first co-operative set up by the Rochdale pioneers and they also established those earlier principles that we talked about. And we know that co-operatives because of the way that they're formed and because they're there for their members have a much higher survival rate than traditional businesses, almost twice as high in fact, as you can see from this graphic. And we think the reason for that is that co-operatives are there for the long term, they're there for the interests of their members and their community. Having a stake and control over how the co-operative run is run makes people more motivated, gives them that stake, allows innovation. And that idea of doing good is really important, that social value is really important. So all of these things in terms of how co-operatives are run really makes them more resilient and more successful. And we've seen that more than ever in the last couple of years, in the wake of the pandemic, we've seen that co-operatives have generally been more resilient. They have been four times less likely to cease trading, they've continued to want to be ambitious and to grow. And I think it's because because they're there for their members and controlled by their members, they tend to be flexible and be able to pivot. And we've seen lots of co-operatives during the pandemic change their their kind of role and do things like mutual aid and support their communities more. And so we know as a model that there are good reasons to run co-operatives and have that ownership and control and that it does make them a much more successful model. And co-operatives exist in all sectors of the economy. There are more than 7000 co-operatives across the UK, everything from food growing to retail to digital housing, and there are co-operatives everywhere. And they are owned by their 14 million members, they're growing each year and they contribute nearly £40 billion to the UK economy. So it's a really important part of the economy. So we seem to have lost Daniel, I don't think he's come back and I'm sorry about that. But one of the things that he would have talked about at Lancaster City Council is the work they're doing around community wealth building and their sort of values there. And co-operatives UK has been working with lots of different local authorities in different areas. And we take a place-based approach around community wealth building. The idea that is really putting control of assets and services and businesses in the hands of local people and people who care most about those services. So that's an agenda that we very much promote and we think that co-operative enterprise and control and ownership of these services and assets are really powerful and does allow for people to have better livelihoods to breathe new life into assets and services. And so I have a couple of examples here of how that operates and one of those is our funded programme. And this is a programme delivered by co-operatives UK called Empowering Places. It's funded by Power to Change. This is the fifth year of this programme. It's an £8 million programme delivered by co-operatives UK in partnership with Clairs and Neff. And Clairs is the centre for local economic studies and Neff as a new economics foundation. And we've been supporting six areas across England from up in Bradford down to Plymouth working with their anchor organisations and catalysts to give them support and grant funding. And really to help them look at how community businesses and co-operatives can create better places and reduce that inequality in local areas. We'll have more evaluation and more to report on how that programme has worked and I'm sure other areas will be looking at this in interest to see how they can do that as well. And this also builds on the Preston model. I'm sure this is familiar to lots of people. It's not just Preston but the wider Lancashire area. And again, the local authority and anchor organisations are working very hard to let people have more control to look at progressive procurement to allow asset transfer and co-operatives and very much at the heart of that those democratic businesses to allow people to have that control. So I'm going to touch on some example co-operatives just to hopefully bring to life a little bit more and we will be joined after this also by Chris Coates from a co-operative in Lancaster called Holden Mill. One of the co-operatives I'll talk about is one that I'm also a member of so I kind of wear two hats not only at Co-operatives UK but this co-operative. So these are just examples of how people, members have come together to form co-operatives to kind of either solve their problems or find better solutions when things are broken and not working the way that they would like them to work. So here we have some examples around health and social care and I think everybody knows that health and social care often doesn't work either for the people working in those sectors or for the people receiving the care. And so these are a couple of examples of new co-operatives that are trying to find or have found alternatives. And really the model of ownership has made that work better for them. So Signalize is a new co-operative supported through the high business support program they set up in 2019 and they provide deaf interpretation and translators to deaf community currently operating in Merseyside. And their members are both the interpreters and the beneficiaries of those services so that they can collectively decide and manage that co-operative, which therefore makes it much more successful. And traditionally in this industry deaf translators work through agencies and they're not very well paid and then for the deaf community, often it's the case that they can't access the services that they need when they need them. So this is kind of a matchmaking service and putting the two together. Another co-operative that's fairly new is Equal Care Co-operative, which operates in the upper quarter valley. And again this is the idea that both the care beneficiaries and the care providers are members of the co-operative. It's what we call a multi-stakeholder co-operative. And both sets of members have control and say over how the co-operative is run and they decide how the service is operated and this makes for a much more successful way of delivering the social care. And both of these have recently been commissioned for contracts by their local authorities and so that's a really good success story. So I'm just going to touch on this very small co-operative, which is just outside of Manchester in place called Choughton. We seem to have quite a lot of co-operatives around Greater Manchester, particularly in Choughton. But I talked before about in the wake of the pandemic, the fact that lots of co-operatives are turned to mutual aid and their communities and supporting them. And Choughton bike deliveries really came out of that. So right at the start of the pandemic in the first lockdown, a group of people decided to do deliveries to local people on their bikes and food parcels and medicines, etc. And they've gone on through the help of the Hive Business Support Programme to set up as a co-operative and their members are the people delivering as well as the businesses that they serve. And again, it just shows how having a co-operative model just formalizes things that people are doing anyway and it sort of builds on the values of co-operatives in terms of self-responsibility and self-reliance. So it's just an interesting model that came out of mutual aid and they are now operating as a trading co-operative. And this is another example of a community coming together to run a service and an asset and this particular one is Radcliffe Market in Greater Manchester near Ferry. There's been a market there for a long time since the 1800s and the Council have been running the market but in 2018 they put it out to Tender and rather than it going out to a private company, the community came together, set up a community benefit society and they are now running the market and their members are the storeholders and users of the market. And as well as traders and food, they also put on entertainment and community events. And as it says here, it's about keeping that money local, it's about their wider aims, not just to run the market but to invigorate the local town. And that's another good example of co-operatives taking responsibility of assets and services that mean a lot to them. So my final case study and co-operative is one I mentioned that I'm also a member of and this is Friends of Stratford Public Hall. So you can't see the building very well here but these are the members of the co-operative and the founding members and some of those aren't members anymore but they did found it. And so the hall is a beautiful, grey-to-listed building, it's gothic style, it's very big and has a wonderful ballroom for up to 400 people. It's been around since the late 1800s, it's been a library, a pool, a theatre and then lately in the late 2000s it was run by Trafford Council, used as their offices. And then they put it out to Tender in 2015 and it could have been purchased by a private investor and continued to be offices or turned into flats. But a small group of people, local people in Stratford which is just outside of Manchester, not a particularly affluent area but they decided that it should stay in community ownership and be used for the community and it would be a shame to lose such a wonderful asset and building to the community. And they set up Friends of Stratford Public Hall as a community benefit society which is a type of co-operative that's owned by the local members, the local community. And since then in 2017 they raised £250,000 from their community in something called community shares. So we have 800 investor members and they all contributed this money, it could have just been a charity and they could have just donated. But the important thing about community shares, it means that everyone has a vote and they have an opportunity to join the board and lots of investors who use the building have also become volunteers. So it's a really important part of being a co-operative rather than just maybe a charity or social enterprise. And I'll talk a little bit more about what community shares are but the building has gone from strength to strength. We have thousands of people use it every day for events, exhibitions, music, weddings. We also have an artist studio and a co-working space and it also has invigorated the local economy as well. So we have a wider mission than just the hall. And as I said, because I invested, I then had the opportunity to join the board. So I am a volunteer society secretary at Streptford Public Hall. So just to say something about community shares. So I mentioned that lots of community societies, co-operative societies can raise funds from their members in the form of investment. This is a unique patient type of finance only available to societies. Community shares has grown substantially over the last 10 years and from a handful of community share offers to now hundreds of communities raising over £180 million from their investors. And this has allowed communities to save assets such as Streptford Public Hall to save libraries and swimming pools and pubs and post offices and all kinds of services. So it's been a huge success story and it's a unique type of finance. It's very patient, it's equity and you can't trade it, you can't make money on it, but you can occasionally earn interest if the business is doing well. And we have a program of support that allows people to apply for funding and also get matched equity funding. So it's become a very popular way for communities and very successful way for communities to raise their funds. So I'm not going to say very much about registering your co-operative and how to start one and we have resources on the website. Other than to say that I mentioned earlier that co-operatives are defined by their principles and not by their legal status. So a co-operative can be any legal form, you can choose from any of these. You can be a company, a society, a partnership, a community interest company and you're still a co-operative. And we have what we call model governing documents that are available for all of these models and legal forms that you can adopt and they include the principles that I spoke about before. If you do want to set up a co-operative, we have support around that, but we also have this wonderful resource on the website. It's called a step-by-step guide and as it suggests, it literally takes you through each of the steps of setting up your co-op and testing your idea from how you finance it, your business plan, and it also helps you to think about your legal form as well as offering an online registration service which is a partnership with Co-operatives UK and funded by the Hive. So I think that sort of I'll come back to support the next step. So that concludes my presentation. Thank you that Daniel has joined us in the corner there. So I'm going to stop sharing for the moment and hand over to Daniel who will talk about Lancaster City Council and then we'll then hand over to Chris to talk about his particular co-operative. So I'll stop sharing and hopefully Daniel, you're okay to share your slides if you can give me a thumbs up. Yeah, thank you very much Petra and thanks for your patience with the IT issues and hopefully I can share my screen and we can get into the presentation. Can we see this now? Can we hear me? We can hear you but there's nothing on the screen Daniel. Oh it's coming up now I think. There we go. Excellent. So yeah fingers crossed I don't get cut out but thanks for your patience and I won't take too long because we want to state to the agenda really in the main content being from Co-operative UK and Chris. But my name is Daniel Clark I'm the Community Wealth Building Officer with Lancaster City Council. So just want to say thanks really to Co-operative UK for organising this webinar today and also for Chris for taking some time out to share some of his experiences as a co-operative. And also thank you everyone for attending I hope it's a useful hour of content. So this is a background really to the direction of the council and community wealth building now I appreciate this is quite a small text document but this should be in the chat if you want to look at this in more depth. If you look to the top there's four priorities which indicate the organisational culture and service delivery at the council. So we've got a sustainable district and inclusive and prosperous local economy, healthy and happy communities and a co-operative kind and responsible council. So you can see the direction and the intention of the council with those priorities. And then the left hand side are the themes which are the main kind of work streams to address those priorities. So we've got the climate emergency, community wealth building which is my area of work and community engagement. So with community wealth building in mind and I'd like to think that through this webinar you'll recognise that co-operatives play a key role in this kind of agenda. This is a definition from CLEZ which is the Centre for Local Economic Strategies. So the definition is simply that community wealth building is a people-centred approach to local economic development. It redirects wealth back into the local economy and places control and benefits into the hands of local people. So I think you can see through that definition that it's broadly looking at social, economic and environmental wellbeing, but co-operatives are an important process within that economic development approach. Now within that kind of broad economic scope there's a specific framework to deliver community wealth building and my work really is looking at these pillars and looking at the areas that we can amplify community wealth building. So very briefly the top one is progressive procurement and that's the idea that through public sector procurement we're in a position to potentially procure goods and services from local SMEs and businesses with the intention of localised wealth and retaining localised wealth within the area. But also delivering social value through that procurement practice and increasingly looking to procure goods and services from generative businesses such as co-operatives and social enterprises. Democratic economies now that's also termed plural ownership of the economy and that directly relates to this webinar because that's the approach to specifically grow and develop alternative business models such as social enterprises, co-operatives, community interest businesses, etc. because they're seen to be more generative for the area. So yeah, that's that pillar. Fair employment. The council is a real living wage employer. We're also developing a fair work charter. So these are the things that we're looking to progress internally but increasingly we'll be looking to do that externally as well and promote these values within the business community and economy. And of course the values of co-operatives correlate to that quite closely. I'm sure Petra's alluded to some of that in the webinar. And the final two is the use of London property and that's the concept that as anchor institutions, the council and other anchors can effectively utilise their London property for communal use or community assets and things of that nature. The final one is financial power and that's the idea around circular economies but also things such as co-operative banks and other localities. Co-operative banks have been developed and have been really successful for the community. And then just really bringing that to the local area within Lancaster, we are aware that we've got a really diverse third sector. We want to support that sector and grow the sector. Obviously during COVID as well we saw a lot of community empowerment, a lot of community groups delivering services and potentially co-operatives could be a way to formalise some other activity and achieve longevity of community empowerment. We'll hear from Chris in the moment. We want to share best practice of some of the existing co-ops in the region. Also we've got really the big universities and statistically young people are more likely to start up co-operatives and that's a dynamic that we want to explore as well in terms of growth. Well that's just a very broad kind of quick introduction to myself and some of the work that I'm involved with. If you wanted to get in touch we are looking to get involved with community groups, businesses and to influence this developing community wealth building agenda. So these are my contact details if you did want to get in touch. So that is everything for me, thank you Petra. So I'll stop sharing my screen. Thank you Daniel. Sorry about the technical problem earlier that we lost. No worries. And so thanks very much for joining us and as I say we are delighted to be working together in partnership with the Manchester City Council on this webinar. So I'm going to hand over now if that's okay to you Chris. Chris is a founder member of a co-operative just outside of Lancaster, Halton Mill which is called the Green Elephant Co-operative. And he's going to share what they do and why they're a co-operative. So hopefully he'll be able to share his slides and thanks very much for joining us today Chris. Okay, I'm assuming everyone can see the slides on the screen. Yeah, my name is Chris Coates. I'm as Petra said I'm one of the founder members of Green Elephant Co-operative, which manage one of the last industrial buildings on on the Riverloon, not just in Halton. It was a very large industrial site spread along a mile of the riverbank originally that fell into decay from the sort of 1980s onwards really, and was designated as a redevelopment zone for housing and to try and retain a sort of element of employment site. Right, as I go through, I will sort of try and explain how we came about. So we've been going since 2013. I wonder why won't my slides go. Yes, okay, so in 2013, former loonside engineering works was had been empty and derelict for over two years. And the previous developer of the site had gone bankrupt, and the site was bought as part of a redevelopment for what's called a co-housing scheme. And part of the original planning application from the bankrupt developer was that you had to provide some employment space to replace the lost sort of employment in the village. So we came along, a number of us who were interested in building the houses, which I've got some pictures of later, and we transformed this derelict building. It was still structurally sound, but needed a lot of renovation into what we now call a low carbon workspace. This is pretty much Houghton Mill today. The view that was previously, we're about approximately just under 2000 square meters of space in the building. Most of it divided up into offices and workshops. And that equates to about 22,000 square foot of office and workshop. So a significant amount of space. The renovation of the building was part funded by an initial grant from the central government when you could get grants for low carbon intervention in sort of local communities. And it was largely though funded by the European program, the RDP program, which we matched with the commercial mortgage from the ecology building society. So that's sort of how the initial renovation was funded. So inside we have, likely on the upper floor, we have series of individual offices. We spent the renovation money on insulation, new windows, and a new heating system and rewiring the building. So we have a selection of offices. We also have a co-working space. We discovered fairly early on that it was very easy to find tenants for small offices, but the larger offices were difficult to let. So we set up a co-working space, which took a while to take off. But at the moment is at post the sort of end of the pandemic, we're getting lots of inquiries of people who are slightly fed up working at home, I think, and want to sort of shared office. So that has been very popular. We also on the ground floor, which are mainly workshops have a what we call Loon Lab maker space, which is essentially a club of local hobbyists. So local people in the village who want to come in and use equipment. You can join this at cost 10 pound a month and basically you've got access to woodworking machinery and pottery studio. We were beneficiaries of some of the equipment is loaned but we were essentially beneficiaries of the county council closing down the adult education center in the middle of Lancaster at White Cross and was basically disposing of a lot of equipment. And if we hadn't taken it, it would have gone in the skip. So a lot of the equipment came from that we have a sort of training room next door where people run courses. Obviously they've been canceled were all canceled because of the pandemic, but we're slowly getting back to running pottery classes. And until until recently jewelry classes. So we also have a dedicated yoga studio on the top floor this was. This is run by one of the yoga teachers, and she lets it out to other practitioners. And frankly, I did not know there were so many different forms of yoga myself, but there are, and that we can be having two, three, even four classes a day, mothers and babies classes pilates classes. And that's partly because pretty much certainly in this end of the district. There is no space that is purely dedicated to this sort of yoga. The other places that are available are in sort of community centers, where you have to clear the chairs away and and set up every time this is just an open space that's purely dedicated to yoga and sort of keep fit type activities. We downstairs we have a sort of canteen space where people can have their lunch, and we can also cater for classes and and events. We have a large what we call the atrium. Strangely, this only exists because we ran out of money. The architect we were working with wanted to sort of put more workshops, if this is a double double height space. And we've ended up using it for all sorts of events this is a local craft fair, sort of Christmas craft fair that we've organized, we've also had concerts in there. And we found that it was a very adaptable space. And it is also, we've got outdoor space this is in fact a little community festival utilizing our car park and garden. So that's a sort of broad broadly what what we do within the building. And then it sort of happened at all is because, and you can see in the background in this. There was a group what is this of what is essentially a grand self build scheme, not self build in the, the people sort of physically built their own houses but in the grand designs, sort of self build. They were a site and bought the former elune side engineering site. And so I'm built 35 eco homes they get called locally, they're built to a German passive house standard so they're super insulated, and as well as the houses which are one bed two bed and three bed houses. There's a sort of clubhouse called a common house where that residents can use, and there are various other communal facilities there's laundry. And this is where the sort of the bit of the title of the cluster of coops come in because there are 35 households on the same site, and interested in sort of sharing things. Very quickly it became obvious that there was need for a food co op. These are a sort of bulk bulk buying co op. So we, the, the co up buys food from wholesalers so that we use summa, which are a big whole food wholesaler from leads. And we also buy from local community vegetable growing schemes. So who think we're great because they run box schemes but we take vegetables by the sack full. And then they use a small store, and it's basically run by volunteers, and we get good quality food at a reasonable price I wouldn't say it's cheap. But it's, it's a reasonable price. And so that has about 4050 members, and some people use it as a corner shop when they run out of things, other people are doing quite a lot of their regular shopping from from the food co op. And it is turning over about 20, between 20 and 25,000 pounds a year through through it doesn't have any employees it's entirely run by its members. The other cooperation on side on site is land car, which is a cooperative car club. It owns seven vehicles at the moment. The electric cars and for other petrol and diesel cars. It is part of the emphasis on the housing scheme was to try and reduce people's carbon footprint, and therefore try and reduce car travel. So this we reckon this probably each car here probably replaces about 10 vehicles. And yet, I would say probably two thirds of the households on site are members of the car club and don't have their own private cars. So you can find booking system. So you can book a car by phone from your mobile phone. And you can see what cars are available. And there is also you can notice there's booked the ghost car. So we have that's if there's no car available. We need to know that there is more demand than we've got cars for so. It has slowly grown we started off with three cars, and it has grown as I say grown to seven cars at the moment. And just in case you want to know why we're called green elephant. And this is a question I was posed right at the beginning. This is Raja, the elephant, and Raja the elephant was built at Houghton mill in the 1950s by the loonside engineering works which were a group of Polish refugees who'd set up an elephant farm and they, they turn their hands to anything, including building mechanical elephants. We managed to track one down which is owned by the Crosby lions in Liverpool, and they brought it back and these are some children who live here, riding on Raja the elephant So it day we opened Houghton mill. So we named ourselves after the elephants because somebody told us that if you want to really remember name that people will remember, you need to have a color and a thing. So we were going to call ourselves Houghton mill managed workspace, which is a big bit of a mouthful and really boring. And this person said no no no call yourself something really memorable that it needs to have a color and a thing so we called ourselves green elephant. And that's me really. Okay I'll stop sharing. It's really inspiring it sounds like you've got a whole sort of ecosystem and cooperative economy going up on in that part of Lancaster, and I can't wait to visit and find out more. Everything there. So, and I think I saw in the comments that there are people who use use some of the facilities there and commented on how great that is. So we have a few minutes left so I'm going to take. I'm going to hopefully try and respond to some questions but if there are still questions coming in please put them in the chat. And depending on on the question we'll see who will pick that up. And before, because I'll probably forget before we finish I want to just say thank you again Chris for joining us this presentation, and also Daniel from Lancaster City Council. And I hope that everyone is inspired to learn more about properties as a result of this. So I'm just looking at the questions that have been posted. So I think someone asked if they're a member of their, their local cooperative supermarket. You know what does that mean. And I suppose it's because the cooperative group and our big retail societies are so large, and they have so many millions of members on a day to day basis and probably don't have the same controls and maybe a smaller system in terms of decisions but you should be invited to the annual general meeting and as a member you get to vote on on certain decisions and you get copies of the annual reports. And you can also be elected to local councils and potentially at some point you can also potentially join boards and other things and have a bigger role. So I think there's some dividends on your purchases every time that you buy buy things so. So that's a different way of being a member in a very big cooperative. I think there was also questions asked I think related to community shares and raising finance and how you invest. In the private business you might have angel investors and the more shares they buy and the more invest the more control and votes they have an in the cooperative if you buy community shares. It's one member one vote regardless of how many shares you buy so that's where that democrat democracy can't say the word sorry democracy comes in and makes it very equitable. They do sometimes have not only individual members buying shares in properties but also institutions and high net worth investors, but they do that so on the same basis as everyone else and they don't have more control than anyone else so it's very democratic. And I think there was also a question for Monica on whether and properties can access European funding and other grants and and yes indeed they can. There's no reason why they can't access that kind of funding. I'm just checking the other questions. And so I think it was Kate who said that they're a regular user of the high we have too many highs we have the high business support program that's like hope just you can we have the high but it's very popular name. And just checking if there's any more questions. Yeah, there's a question. There's another question from Monica that's asked I think this one's directed to Chris. It says, is there a joint overall owner for the project or are all individual carts put together green elephant project. It's very inspiring. Monica says. Okay. Lancaster co housing who redevelop the site. So overall owner of the entire site they own the freehold. And the, the people who have a house on site have got a 999 year lease so they can raise a mortgage and green elephant has has a lease on the as a head lease on the mill, and we then sublet to our tenants. And that's sort of a sort of the ownership structure if you like of the properties. And, but any profits being generated by green elephant are reinvested in the building in the members. And the idea behind setting up the project was that it should not be a burden on anybody who wanted to buy a house here. And so it was aimed to be sort of cost neutral as far as anybody who was wanting to move into to one of the properties. It's changed the what could have just been a little sort of nice little housing estate into something more in that we have the mill is a, it's a sort of interaction between us and the local community. And we're communes to resource we, we host kids but anything from children's birthday parties to various talks. And I mean if I'm honest, it works because there is a baseline of the tenants paying their rents that that sort of helps the community space. So there's a sort of interaction between the two and, and there's benefits to the individual tenants of, of the sort of people who come on courses people who come on yoga then, then sort of buy things off the tenants. So that's really helpful answer and I think there's lots of praise for what we're doing and someone else. Michael has said that halter mill is a jewel in the Lancaster district crown and others that are not local from London I can't wait to come up and visit. So, so lots of praise for all the good work you're doing and lots of similarities in the way facilities that you provide answer as I mentioned earlier friends of strength public call. Yeah, I thought slightly different setting but slightly different building but we, we don't quite have a dedicated yoga, yoga space it does they do have to remove their maths but yes yoga and well being is a big part of what we do at friends of public call as well. So I can't see any more questions at the moment. Anyone wants to ask a quick question now or there's anything you wanted to add before we finish so what I might do is, I might just share my last slides to say what support is available for anyone that wants to learn more about their co-operatives or want support to set up their co-operative and where they can go for that support. So I'll just quickly share my last slides again, this will work on full screen, full screen. So, yes, too many highs but properties UK the high business support program this is the program that we're doing with our partner the cooperative bank. So people can apply if they're setting up their cooperative for support and get up to 10 days of support. It's an open application form. I'm sure my colleague as we speak is putting the link in the chat if you want to look out for that. Members of co-operatives UK can also access all the services we provide co-operatives UK around HR culture governance finance and all of those things are available. We offer a range of training sessions, particularly around how to be a good director and everything else that goes around the governance of running your cooperative. And we also have the community shares unit and has lots of resources and how to do your community share offer. And we have a program called the community shares booster program. So if you're at the point of having incorporated your organization and you want to do a share offer, you can apply for development support and also matched equity funding so for every pound raise from your community. We will match that to a certain extent. So those are the programs that are available and the support that's available. And as I say, we will share this these slides later be uploaded and share the link with you. And we've put lots of links in chat as well. The final slide is this this link. This is the link that go to properties UK. And that has all the programs that I mentioned and has all the useful tools about starting your cooperative. And when we share the link will also point you to the support and services that are available at City Council. So let's stop sharing there. And just check if there's been any more questions. And we have a couple more minutes left before we finish. Just check. Sorry. So yeah, I think lots of questions about whether we will be circulating the slides so we most definitely will. I think there was a question about sharing the chat. I didn't know that that was, wasn't possible so apologies for that and I'm sorry about any sound or technical difficulties we had at the beginning. So there doesn't seem to be any more questions. Is there anything else that anyone Daniel or Chris you wanted to add at this stage before we finish the webinar. Is there anything else we've got a couple more minutes before we would just just like to mention that there's a brief survey as well that will be circulated with the slides to everyone that's attended. So if anyone's interested in sharing information sharing thoughts ideas that we can pick up on and that kind of ties into my work to maybe facilitate future events like this. Yeah, really appreciate if you could fill in that service that would be useful for me. Yes, so that's great. No that's a good reminder will also be sending a survey to see how webinar went but yes if if you'd want support particularly if you want to talk to Daniel at Lancaster City Council please do look out for those links. And I think, I think there's lots of people interested in being able to speak to you, Chris as well are you are you happy for us to circulate an email or would you rather not have lots of inquiries. No, no, no, no we're very happy on on as one of the co-operative principles is to support of the co-ops we're more than happy. One of one of my fellow sort of management team is a former journalist so we're very sort of media and sort of inquiry friendly as a co-op. And that goes the same to me with wearing my hat at Stratford Public Hall, we were always having visitors coming to see how we did things at the hall and how we raised our funds from community share so very happy to entertain that. And part of the support that we give through the high business support program is peer mentoring, where we actually fund a co-operative time to talk to you and share their experience and learning so that that's always very useful to new groups setting up. So I think, I don't think there's any more questions or anything. Yeah, so I think people are asking why there's so many up north it's because this particular webinar in terms of case studies was focused on Lancaster and the region and so I selected ones that will kind of as close as possible in the northwest. But of course we have co-operators across the UK lots of examples are 7000 to choose from, and some of our webinars have focused on on other case studies so do have a look at the recordings it's not that we, we don't have co-operators in other parts of the country which is this one was particularly sort of focused on this this part of the world. So yeah happy to share other examples if that's that's useful. So I don't think there's any more questions. Okay, so I think we'll we'll finish it there we're I think we're just about on time so thanks again to Chris for joining us it was very inspiring to hear about your particular co-operative, and thanks again to Daniel. It's been great to be able to deliver this in partnership with Lancaster City Council, and we look forward to working together and going forward. Thanks everyone for attending and we'll finish it there.