Some loans are for more tangible things than others and this one, to Bristol Plumbing Co-operative, was for a very tangible new asset – a brand new van.
Bristol Plumbing are still going today, albeit with a new look – check out the gallery on their website to see some really stunning examples of their work and if you’re in Bristol and you need a plumber – you know who to call!
Today in our series looking back at the people who’ve been part of ICOF over the last fifty years, we speak to someone to whom many of you will need no introduction. Ian Taylor was part of ICOF for thirty years and he’s been mentioned by many of you. Over to you Ian…
“I think what puzzles many people is how and why ICOF has lasted so long – for fifty years. It’s an incredible achievement. But when you see the very essence of ICOF, it’s not that incredible because it’s about people and for people.
The inspiration for ICOF in the early days, and certainly carried through to my time was EF Schumacher, he’s famous for Small Is Beautiful : A study of economics as if people mattered. We carried those straplines on some of our documents. The belief in common ownership, creating collective benefit through collective action, appeals to investors and donors, funders, staff, trustees and borrowers. That’s the essence of ICOF, it’s about people who are interested in people, lending to those people, because of what they are trying to achieve. It was further enhanced by a particular policy of ICOF, which is still in place: the refusal to take personal guarantees. If you move to a village and there’s a village green, you all benefit from it, when you move, you don’t take a piece of the green with you – if there is no personal gain, there shouldn’t be personal loss. That’s my belief – the coop itself outlives the members, members come and go as caretakers. And that always singled us out from virtually all other lenders, particularly banks, but other social financiers as well.
ICOF’s approach is appreciated, especially by Borrowers – they see the money that they’ve borrowed, being repaid, relent, and lent again and again, to similar organisations to themselves. So it’s kind of creating a network, it’s about knowing where their money’s come from, and where their money goes back to and that results in very low loss rates. Loss rates, even at the height of recessions, were at about 3%. Banks rarely achieve such rates. When you think about what the UK economy has gone through in fifty years – the early 80s recession, which was horrendous. The early 90s recession; the Great Recession in 2008 and then the COVID recession – and our losses were always low. I think the reason for that is people recognise and fully support what we do: its friendly finance meeting need and not greed.
On a personal note, I’ve been very fortunate in my working life in being able to get jobs that enabled me to keep my principles. Before ICOF, I was working with long term unemployed people in a community action project called Capital Jobmate with Capital Radio. I’ve also been involved in regeneration, urban and rural. And I was one of two founder members that set up a common ownership manufacturing worker co-op – Blackwall Products -in 1983.
And then in 1987 I heard there was a job running a Loan Fund for ICOF in West Glamorgan. I applied and had the interview on a Friday, heard I got the job on the Saturday and we bought a house on the Sunday – my partner and I – and our entire lives changed. I was taken on as lending officer for West Glamorgan and the area expanded almost to the whole of the UK over the years. I became Investment Manager in 1998 until 2016 when I retired. I then went to art college.
Nowadays, worker coops themselves, even common ownership ones, have been overshadowed by the growth in community benefit societies which are common ownership themselves. People working together collectively for an identifiable benefit – so there’s no personal gain. I suppose initially, I saw co-ops as a kind of a trial for people working locally, to help each other locally, a kind of decentralised economy, which is what Schumacher discussed in Small Is Beautiful.
Over the years, there were lots of internal conflicts their resolution crucial to the development of ICOF. Things like interest rates – their level and whether or not they should be market driven – personal guarantees, loans to privately owned small businesses, the role of the CEO – whether to have a CEO – employee ownership development. All of these things were debated and probably will be again.
One of my most enjoyable and productive relationships was with Peninsular Trust in Cawsand in South East Cornwall. I visited a number of times but a very early visit was the most memorable for all the wrong reasons.
I had arranged to meet Simon Ryan in a car park but there was no sign of him. He rang and gave detailed directions to where he was waiting which I followed religiously, but only to end up in another car park which was the car park that I had just left. Not only was I in the wrong car park, I was in the wrong village. Simon came to the rescue.
Marged Shoes was a women’s shoe making co-op in deepest rural Wales. They were radical lesbian feminists who worked and lived on the premises. Visiting to appraise their loan application required a female escort. Luckily, a feminist lesbian CDA worker was on hand. It wasn’t so scary, in fact it turned into a very productive relationship with me photographing their products and organising promotional materials and even buying boots for presents. Perhaps they were social feminists rather than radical.
When I talk about ICOF, I still say we – and I left seven years ago. It was a huge part of my life, and a part of which I feel proud. On retiring I went to art school and tried to have fun, but it was a poor alternative to working. I find art really stressful – I never found ICOF that stressful!
So thanks ICOF it was a privilege working for you. Keep going for another 10 years, another 60 years. The way the economy’s going now, it’s all about greed, It’s not about need, it is certainly not about small and it’s getting worse here and internationally, so we need you.”
Wood Recycling Projects exist all around the UK and we have been proud to work with the Oxford Wood Recycling Project on a number of occasions.
Far more than simply a shop selling wood, wood recycling projects tend to include elements of employment support, volunteering and training. Oxford Wood Project is no different – their Wood To Work project helps those who face significant barriers to employment, including health or disability, to enter the world of work by supporting them to be ready for work, to find a job and to support them whilst they start work.
They also sell sustainable furniture made on site, that will last and last and is ultimately biodegradable.
We made various loans to the project through the 2010s, largely for heavy kit including a kindling machine, and two 3.5 tonne trucks.
During the lockdowns, we interviewed their CEO Richard Snow as part of our COVID stories series – they responded rapidly to the crisis and we’re happy to see them thriving again today. Do check them out if you’re in the market for a long lasting piece of furniture, you’ll be making a positive impact while acquiring something beautiful.
We’ve been celebrating our fifty years of friendship and finance by talking to the people who have worked with us along the way. Today we introduce Christina Wigmore, of Soft Touch Arts, in Leicester
We first got involved with ICOF in around 2005. We needed to make improvements to the building we were in at the time, and so we got a loan of around £10,000, to help us to do more kind of work with young people in that space.
That was our first loan, which was brilliant. And, then five or so years later, we realised we had really outgrown that building and its location, which was outside the city centre, and really hard for young people to get to – we worked with young people from a lot of the outlying estates and it could be two buses for them to get to us. We were spending a lot of money in transport costs to get them there. As well as that, it didn’t have great disabled access.
We had a real vision of what we could be and we wanted to develop the company and raise our profile. We decided we needed to be in the city centre, and started looking for a building – preferably to purchase – because if we had a longer term lease on a building or we owned a building, we could also apply for Arts Council capital funding, to improve all our equipment and everything else. Then, in 2012, we found a put a perfect building on New Walk in Leicester.
We started trying to work out how we could buy this building. It belonged to the city council. It used to be their workplace nursery and had been empty for some time, and they were wanting to sell it on the open market at auction. So I wrote to the Mayor, and said, “Look, you know, we’ve got these ideas, to turn it into a Youth Art Centre. It would be a fantastic thing for Leicester and for young people of Leicester – would you consider selling it to us?”
Happily, they took it off the market and said they would sell it to us, but then of course we had to find the finance! We went down various avenues of commercial banks and, being a kind of social enterprise charity, we got so far and they said, “Oh, no, you’re not secure enough”.
So then because we had the track record with ICOF we went back and asked if ICOF would consider making a loan. It wasn’t that complex, but I think it was a big risk for ICOF, I think it might have been the biggest loan that they’ve given at that time. £149,000 seems to stick in my head. We had to raise some of the money ourselves, because the building was more than that. But ICOF loaned us a big percentage of that, and we’ve always managed to make our payments. It’s just amazing that ICOF put the trust in us as an organisation and made that loan otherwise – well, I don’t know where we’d be. We probably would have fizzled out by now. We really believe that building has really helped to raise our profile, to grow as an organisation and develop in the ways that we wanted to develop and offer better services for young people.
The new building enabled us to really have state of the art facilities, and we designed it with young people to make sure it provided what they wanted. So we’ve got a music rehearsal room, recording facilities and an art studio, a kitchen because we started to do a lot of cooking work. We have an event space, which we use for exhibitions and a social enterprise café where young people get cooking and catering skills, in a real Café environment, that also brings in a bit of funding to put back into the project. We run all kinds of events, fundraising events, business engagement events, exhibitions – we would never have been able to do any of those things, so the building really changed the way our organisation operates, and the range of opportunities we’re able to give to young people.
Our opening event for the building was actually a royal opening! It was a lot of work but it gave us a lot of publicity. We invited everybody that had been involved. Since then, some of the more successful events are those events where we’re showing what young people do, but whilst we’re trying to engage people that wouldn’t know about the charity. We call these our Show and Tell events – we bring people in from local businesses or local authority and they see in action, what Soft Touch does in action.
Happy Birthday ICOF – keep on making a difference and supporting fantastic social enterprise projects to grow and develop. Soft Touch wouldn’t be where we are now without your support