Co-operatives UK - Modern Organisation

Modern Organisation

The modern organisation began to take shape when Dame Pauline Green became the first female chief executive of the Co-operative Union on New Year's Day 2000. Practically her first action in the position was to write a letter – co-signed by Lord Graham of Edmonton, Graham Melmoth, and Len Fyfe – to then Prime Minister Tony Blair for his help in creating a second Co-operative Commission, to help revitalise the Movement for the next century. Green served on the Commission – chaired by John Monks – and then took the job of co-ordinating the Union's response to the final report. The Union began a "deliberate attempt to secure and celebrate co-operative advantage", forming closer ties with other organisations across the Movement in an attempt to create the "first ever 'all movement' Co-ordination Movement".

The fruit of these closer ties was an increased visibility and role for the Union in the Co-operative Movement. The Union began providing administration services for the United Kingdom Co-operative Council (UKCC) and the Industrial Common Ownership Movement (ICOM) in 2000, which ultimately led to the UKCC deciding to wind up and allow the Union to take over its functions, and ICOM merging with the Union to bring together the retail and worker co-operative sectors for the first time since they split in 1880. The two groups members voted their agreement to the merger in the Autumn of 2001, and ICOM brought its staff and membership to the Manchester offices of the Union when the merger was formalised in December 2001.

The organisation went through a two year transitional period before its members voted in December 2002 to rename it Co-operatives UK. The new identity was launched in January 2003, with Green calling the change "our way of showing that the Co-operative Movement now has a single strategic voice in the UK" and using the opportunity to push the revitalised organisation into developing new services and vigorously promoting the values of the Co-operative Movement. A "New Ventures" panel was established to promote new co-operative ideas, a Corporate Governance Code of Best Practice was published to help promote good practice and the Union began encouraging its members to report on Key Social and Co-operative Performance Indicators to demonstrate their commitment to co-operative ethical principles. All three initiatives were recommended by the Co-operative Commission to assure the future of the Co-operative Movement.

Green announced that she intended to retire as chief executive of the organisation in 2009, saying: "I will be 60 at and I have always intended to retire when I reached that milestone. The Board and I agreed that it made sense for me to finish after Co-operative Congress 2009, which is, to all intents and purposes, the end of our co-operative year." In July 2009, it was announced that Ed Mayo would become Secretary General of Co-operatives UK, resigning as Chief Executive of Consumer Focus to take up the post. He took up the position officially the following November.

Co-operatives UK continues to work on behalf of the Co-operative Movement as a whole, opposing recommendations from the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) that would have seen co-operative members' share capital classed as debt and "destroyed" the co-operative advantage, responding to a Government consultation to amend the Industrial and Provident Societies Act 1965 and encouraging their members to do likewise and gathering information on the scope and scale of the UK Movement, maintaining a searchable directory of UK co-operatives on its website.