ICOF50

In our series interviewing our friends from the last fifty years, today we meet Andy Love. Andy was a Trustee from 1993 to 2022 and was the PLC shareholders representative on the board for most of this time.

“In many ways, I’ve been a lifelong co-operator. I’ve been involved in various sectors of the Movement over many years. Some of my earliest involvement was with retail cooperatives – the shops on the high street. Much of my early involvement was in a London context.

When Ken Livingstone was elected as London’s Mayor, one of the first steps he took was to set up an organisation called the London Co-operative Enterprise Board. It was a revolving loan fund, very much like ICOF, but with a regional, London specific remit. I was asked to become a trustee of that Board and when they broke up, some years later, I worked closely with ICOF to ensure the remaining funds were retained within the co-operative sector

In the late 80’s, ICOF launched its second ethical share offer – known as the PLC. I was heavily involved in trying to ensure that it was a success not only because we needed it to be a success in its own right, raising as it did a million pounds. But this had to be achieved against the backdrop of the demutualisation mania – selling off ownership of our Building Societies, the savings of which built up over many generations of members would be squandered. We had to make the argument for investing in our Movement not disinvesting as happened in far too many cases.  It was touch and go but we are still here giving the Banks a good run for their money!

For some years I had been living in North London and was working with local Co-op development agencies and many other linked organisations including worker co-operators. Through those contacts I was able to get to know them much better.  When it was suggested that I consider becoming a Trustee of ICOF, one of the obstacles that I faced was that I’d never had direct experience of working within a worker cooperative. To resolve this issue I was invited to stand as the PLC shareholders representative. I already had a personal investment in the PLC, so that cleared the decks and I became a trustee in 1992.  But for how long I remained a trustee is a source of some dispute!

In 1997, I was elected as a member of parliament. That brought new responsibilities which were inevitably going to take up all of my time and I suggested that the Board should look into electing a new representative at the next AGM. For a variety of reasons, that didn’t happen. Whether you subscribe to the idea that I was such a good trustee that the Board couldn’t afford to lose me, or perhaps more accurately that having an MP on the front cover of the annual report looked good. For the first few years I explained the omission as ICOF having granted me extended leave. But that had worn very thin by the time I left Parliament eighteen years later!

When I first joined ICOF, I was struck by the different culture and the different ways in which people thought about the problems they faced. Retail coops are individual shops where members can purchase food and other goods and services. They’re part of regional and national co-operatives competing with the likes of Tesco’s and Asda.  So they wear their cooperative principles rather lightly compared to worker cooperatives, where all members are expected to play a role in the business. There’s little sympathy for the idea of the worker member ‘just’ being an employee.  Coming from a retail cooperative background, I found this unusual, but I came to appreciate the benefits.

Co-operators should cooperate with each other, but often they don’t. Some of it is to do with culture and values. When looking back its important to reflect on what we got right and what we got wrong, I’ve taken the view over the years that a particular danger is an obsession with structures to the exclusion of like-minded organisations.

I would like to see social ownership companies being taken seriously as part of the wider movement. This should strengthen the sector and bring fresh energy into the cooperative movement There is an urgent need for improved education amongst co-operators. This should, initially, take the form of a lively debate on the future of the Co-operative Movement.

Happy Birthday ICOF. Who would believe that you would still be here, offering a wide range of services to the workers democratic movement in this country? It’s a great pleasure and honour for me to be asked to contribute to this anthology of reflections.  I have always felt at home in your movement; you have kept me abreast of developments when I wasn’t able to play a full part in your deliberations. And you continue to argue the case for why we need democracy in business in this country. Long may you continue to do so. Long may you prosper and grow, and long may you be relevant to the members you represent and the businesses that you support. It’s been a notable 50 years. Let’s make the next 50 even better.”

Today in our series of interviews looking back at our first fifty years in business, we meet Alain Demontoux who many of you will know. After starting with us as a Trustee in 2002, and joining as staff in 2006, Al is now a key member of the team as our Operations and FCA Compliance Manager

“I first came across ICOF when I was working for Essential Trading. I’d started working there in 1989, packing herbs and picking orders, and then after 16 years was in finance where I was involved in buying the second warehouse. We borrowed £150k from ICOF to fund the equity gap between the purchase price and the Triodos main mortgage. That was in 2001 and that’s when I met Ian Taylor – Ian really liked the reports I was producing and suggested I join the ICOF board. A year or so later I did, and was staff trustee for four years. Then a position came up as Operations Manager, which I interviewed for and that was it!

I joined on condition that we move the main office from London to Bristol, where I lived. The London office was in London Rebuilding Society’s offices, in an old bank on Old Street, and it had a massive vault where we kept all the loan documents. For six weeks I was working out my notice with Essential part time, and then travelling down to London on a Sunday, staying with my sister in Wimbledon, getting the tube to Old Street, doing that backwards and forwards for three days and then getting on the train on Wednesday night to work out my notice at Essential in Bristol on the Thursday and Friday. Exhausting stuff!

Within those six weeks, I moved the office. We found an office with The Ethical Property Company which worked really well and then I had to pack up the old office and put it all back together again in Bristol.

It’s been a journey. In 2008, only two years after I started we had the economic meltdown and banking crisis. We had variable rate loans then with no collars then, so as the interest rates fell, our interest rate income fell through the floor! And now all these years later, it’s a the complete reverse with interest rates flying through the roof. In terms of economic history, we’ve seen the lot!

I came from a worker co-op background. I’ve lived in housing coops, so I was very much from that side of things, and ICOF always seemed to champion that. But you can only champion a market that’s there. Over the years that more traditional style of co-operation has diminished because there hasn’t been the support for coop advisors to keep developing new coops. The Co-op development bodies that were set up in the 80s have dwindled – they were a huge part of our story, our history and our trustees! In fact, some of our seed funding in the 80s was part of that, from the Labour government.  If you’re not creating a new raft of co-op development workers to replace all the ones who are now retiring then the sector doesn’t have that support to continue to grow. We’ve adapted what we’re doing, for example by working with community shares. We funded ourselves to the tune of £1.7 million through our PLC share offer in 1987 – that was  a ground-breaking ethical investment, right there. Community shares are just an extension of that, getting individuals to get together to raise their own shares, and we’re still doing that through ICOF Community Capital.

Securing funds to on lend has always been something that we have to watch and manage. There’s only so much money we can lend. At one point the Board discussed tripling lending in three years (this was mentioned in Siôn Whellens interview here) and I was tasked to go away and work out the numbers. Well, I calculated we’d run out of money after nine months! Recycling finance is at the core of what we do but that means we need to wait for it to come back in before we can lend it again. I always see lending as fundamentally what we do, and if we weren’t lending – just running a programme – I wouldn’t get the same satisfaction out of the job.

We’ve also been gifted funds by local authorities in the past – local authority co-op loan funds were the flavour of the month for a while, but they soon found that we could run them better which led to them gifting the funds. Whenever someone asks me where the money comes from I always say nice money, from nice people!

Having cash to lend is really important and lending a key part of what we do, but supporting community share offers had become increasingly important. This isn’t just pubs, they can be for cinemas, community centres, bookshops – all kinds of community assets. Some of our relationships, for example with Social Investment Business, Reach Fund and the Co-op Foundation mean we’re able to offer loans and grants, which we’d never been able to do in the old days. The reach we have is much wider now – we can’t just be sitting there with a loan pot for co-ops if that market has changed, we have to change with it whilst retaining influence of the agenda. I’m still heartened that there’s a lot of collectivisation, it doesn’t have to be a worker co-op for people to get together and do stuff for themselves in their communities.

Personally, I’m proud that I’ve had two jobs with two co-ops, with no gaps, in over 30 years – it’s incredible. I sometimes wonder how that happened! It’s been a privilege. I think I’ve been very lucky to have been involved in two organisations that align so completely with my values. Essential has a massive place in my heart and I’m amazed when I look at how big they are now. Being able to transition from them to ICOF has just been an amazing journey really. I’m blessed to still be working in this sector.

Happy birthday ICOF and all who have been part of this journey! I will be saying happy birthday when I stand up and make a toast at our 50th anniversary dinner in Bristol!

In our series of interviews with friends from our first fifty years of financing co-ops and community ownership, today we talk to Tiziana O’Hara, founder member of Co-op Alternatives – the only cooperatives development agency in Northern Ireland.

“Co-operative Alternatives is a Co-operative Development body. It’s quite recent in that we’ve been operating for the past 10 years. We are the only CDB In Northern Ireland and of course, we have a lot in common with the rest of the UK as there is a lot of similar legislation, even though organisations like Power to Change and some of the National Lottery support that has been available to Wales and Scotland for Community Shares doesn’t stretch here. Our relationship with ICOF started when we had common clients. We would be helping them by providing the development part of it, while ICOF was supporting them with a loan. Usually our working relationship is this way –  we do the development, we set up the cooperative, we do all business planning and the legal work, and then when the cooperative needs the start-up capital – which could be loans or maybe community shares – we suggest ICOF. ICOF is one of the few organisations that is tuned in to the community share market.

I’ve always found ICOF quite accessible although their capital might be considered to focus more on the other regions of the UK. I developed a good relationship with the team when they visited Northern Ireland to visit clients, we met each time, and we’ve worked together on a couple of projects.

These projects have included Jubilee Farm and Ballymacash Sports Academy. Some of these included collaboration with the Co-op Foundation, to underwrite the community shares.

Jubilee Farm in Larne is the first community-owned farm in Northern Ireland. It’s very much about creating community spaces where they can grow vegetables and care for animals.

The Ballymacash sports project is a great community sports facility. Initially they needed money to renovate their own pitch, and now they are going on on to bigger things, building a sports academy.

These two projects were quite early stages, but ICOF came in and helped us with the Co-op Foundation to open up a bit of financial support. Recently, I’ve also got to know Kevin Lloyd-Evans, ICOF new Lending and Relationship Manager. He has given great support to Boundary Brewing, a very long established cooperative in Northern Ireland. I always find that the relationship with ICOF is very personal, very close and personal. And I like that because I would not really thrive in a very formal environment! That kind of accessibility and approach has suited my organisation very well.

In the future, I am looking forward to continuing our good relationship with ICOF. In terms of the future for social finance, I would like to see some new kinds of hybrid funding from financial organisations – I’m not a financial person but maybe this could be not only loans, maybe underwriting some shares, a bit of seed funding and a bit of maybe share or equity capital. There’s a lot of opportunity but today it’s good to celebrate the good things and this good relationship. I think in our sector we survive only if we have a good, open kind of conversation with each other and I think the team in ICOF has always had that with us.

Here’s a bilingual birthday greeting! Congratulazioni per il vostro cinquantesimo anniversario e tanti auguri per altri cinquant’anni! Congratulations for your 50^th anniversary and best wishes to another 50!

From Tiziana in Northern Ireland with my double identity, Italian by heart, but Northern Irish in work.

In our series of interviews with friends from the last fifty years, today we meet Richard Snow, CEO of Oxford Wood Recycling. We last spoke to Richard in 2020, to find out how the business had managed through Covid at that point.

“I’ve been aware of ICOF since before my time here at Oxford Wood Recycling. I first knew of them during my time in employment with Co-operative Futures, going back to 2005, and then following that we had a more close relationship when I joined the Plunkett Foundation in 2008. I was with Plunkett until 2014 and we were partners on various programmes. So a varied history!

The relationship with ICOF as a borrower with Oxford Wood Recycling would have started in around 2013, 2014. We borrowed a small amount and then later we borrowed something like £80,000 in 2015, when we moved, which we paid off over a number of years, interrupted for a short time by COVID.

That loan was to cashflow growth and development, in order to meet the new increased costs of a new premises. We knew the move would unlock more business but the costs of running the organisation in the new premises were a real step up – the rent and rates costs were six times what they had been and we had to grow into that space. That £80,000 allowed us some breathing space to develop the trading part of the organisation to the extent that was required to to inhabit that larger space.

We wouldn’t have got a loan for something like that from a high street lender. There was no way – in fact, we may even have tried from our bank. But they are a very conservative lender. We were running the organisation on a shoestring and this would have been a gamble for ICOF. I got the impression that that’s what they were in the business to do, they were willing to accept the risks involved in supporting social enterprises and co-ops to start up and I think that was probably decisive in our ability to work with them.

I’ve always found the relationship with ICOF to be very understanding, sensitive and businesslike. It’s been really good. There was always someone on the end of the phone, one felt one had an advisor. The fact that there was always a small cohort of people there, it was not a large office, meant you got to know people and there was always a sympathetic ear. They are a a proper social lender.

Happy birthday ICOF on your 50 years of lending. You thoroughly deserve to light a very big cake!

Today in our series of interviews with friends from the last fifty years, we speak to David Still CBE, who has been both a borrower and a Trustee.

“I first heard about ICOF when I was part of a workers cooperative called Northumbrian Energy Workshop, in around 1984. We were looking for finance and borrowed from ICOF. And I then became a Trustee in 1987 and stayed for ten years, until 1997.

As a borrower ICOF was one of the only sources of funding and finance for a workers’ co-op at that time. Funding wasn’t easy, interest rates were high, so it was very, very important to have a robust but sympathetic lender, who we could approach and develop our business plan with and go from there.

Getting involved as a Trustee became quite an interesting process. ICOF was going through quite a lot of change from being a very small organisation with very few people to a much more expansive organisation, with more funding, as well. And so we changed, and change is never fun! But we went through it and survived.

Previously, I had been involved overseas with Voluntary Services Overseas in Papua New Guinea working in business development – producing projections, seeking finance, etc. Going into ICOF I then effectively had two jobs, one being the stewardship of ICOF and its funds and how it went on and the other being loan oversight. Probably the major thing for me was being involved in assessing business plans that were coming forward, and working very closely with the monitoring officers there which was mainly Ian Taylor and Martin Hockley and latterly with Nigel Mason and Leon Boris as well. So, very much a learning process for me, in that I learned things from every review I did, and increasingly felt able to give them appropriate feedback, from my experience.

There was a shift in focus through the time I was with ICOF, probably from more pure cooperative to slightly more social enterprise type opportunities. Not massive changes and all still member owned. We also went through a more robust change in how we were assessing and reviewing projects, we increased our ability to understand what borrowers were wanting, while also developing a bit more flexibility because of our changed funding. Our initial funding was very tight on who and what we could fund. When we had the PLC funding, then we had a bit more flexibility on the type of organisation we could lend. That gave us a bit of internal discussion on how we were to do that. But that was our task and our and it was quite good. We were very active as trustees, we didn’t turn up just once a quarter for the jolly, it was very much about being involved. I was quite heavily involved with Ian Taylor, reviewing projects. He would come up and do a series of monitoring visits or  grant reviews. That was very helpful, to be active in between the quarterly meetings, getting involved in the financial side of the business and understanding it, and making sure we were doing the right things.

Today, and in the future, I think ICOF has the opportunity again, to be a nimble investor as trying to raise money from a bank or other organisation is very difficult. There are more opportunities like crowdfunding now which could come in and could also be a kind of like a product that ICOF could deliver and support, so that it’s happening there in one place, giving a potential business more options to to than a conventional bank. I don’t think conventional banks are acting very sensibly at this moment in time. They’ve been very cautious and my experience of mainstream banks is not very positive at this stage. I think they have limited vision. What ICOF can offer, relatively to a small number of people, is a very much one to one relationship. The opportunity in our sector, where ICOF acts, is that ability to develop those relationships and get businesses to grow despite the rest of the world.

A particular fond memory I have of ICOF – probably the most interesting thing that I did – is of a meeting in the House of Commons with the late John Smith MP, we were talking about future co-op funding. It was not long before he died. It was great to have such interest in what we were doing from somebody who had a lot of clout in the political arena.

ICOF, happy birthday. Your 50 years have really tracked by very quickly. Here’s to more years and more support for the sector, involving more communities and more groups of people working together, which is so very important to us as a country.”