Worker Co-operative CICs (Community Interest Companies) - do we have a list? do you know any?

I wonder if some of the reason for this apparent small number of worker co-ops choosing a CIC form is the challenge in reconciling co-op values and principles with the powers of the Regulator and CIC legislation?

i.e.
* autonomy and independence vs. regulated trading activities (i.e. the Regulator can tell you what you can and can't do as trading activities), and Regulator being able to sue other people in your name;

* democratic member accountability vs. Regulator being able to remove and appoint Directors of their choosing, and overrule any Members vote in respect of choosing to wind up;

* openness vs. Regulator refusing to disclose any information about what actions they take over the complaints they receive about the conduct of individual CICs, so we don't know how far any of the above may be an issue at all (and which has also caused some backlash in places after the BBC expose of CICs a few weeks back).

But I'm aware that other co-ops have managed these tensions through careful and open comms about themselves via their websites etc; and also spending more time in designing internal governance practices, to ensure that none of the above should ever come to pass for them, but I'd be interested to hear of how other co-ops have approached managing these apparent risks (thankfully CICs are no longer subject to enforced unequal voting as they did when they were first introduced...), so looking forward to reading up on examples that will be shared in this thread.



ps. re: grants - be aware that the CIC Regulator said in a recent annual report that the majority of CICs they register are wound up within 2 years, usually because they were unable to access or receive the grant funding that they thought they would be able to. There are exceptions to this, and there are signs that this is changing, with most new CICs being private companies converting, but to be forewarned and all that?

@adrian ashton @Nicholas Frealand

Several points worth answering. :D

In the PS:

70% of new businesses fail in the first year, and 70% of those survivor's fail in the second year.

This failure rate is consistent up to year 5.

With a group of people's individual practice's joining together, they have already gone through the early iterations of this process, when starting up each individual practice.

@Nicholas Frealand If each of your potential members haven't gone through this process, then it would be a good idea to do a lot of lesson-sharing between your potential members, as it is always cheaper/easier/less-painful to learn from other's mistakes. :D

This process will also help your group cohesion a lot. :D

Since there was no mention of grants in the initial post, this shouldn't be a problem, though more details of the potential business plan would help.

"Many eyes make all bugs shallow." :D

@adrian ashton While i had heard about some of the pro's and con's of the CIC legal structure, i hadn't heard about the powers of the Industry Regulator's in relation to this.

Any useful links to this?

@Billy Smith https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/27/notes/division/5/2 Paragraphs 242 to 257

And there was mention of Grants being the primary reason for thinking about the CIC form

@Andrew Woodcock

I hadn't realised how harsh those terms are.

After dealing with UK-based QUANGO's, and, NGO's that were acting unethically, due to internal staff committing fraud, i can see why those powers are necessary, but from my "co-operative anarchist" pov, i can also see how those powers could easily be mis-used, if a Bad Actor is appointed to the role of Regulator.

The CIC legal structure is not going to work in this case, or for any of the co-op's that i want to create.

In the early 1970's, the founders of Sanford Housing Co-op managed to create poison-pill clauses in their founding constitution, to block future internal Bad Actors from defrauding all of the other members. Just the threat of invoking them has been enough to stop any attempts, as the clauses mean that it wouldn't be profitable. :D

It would be worth contacting John Hands, as he was one of the founding members that brought those clauses in. :D

https://sanford.coop/about

There's links to a good documentary at the bottom of the page. :D

@Billy Smith Thanks will check that out.

And yes this is certainly why I don't recommend CIC's to more political minded co-ops, as the potential for the state to intervene is too high and there are no real benefits that I can see.

@Billy Smith - when you look up the origin story of CICs (they're the only legal form to have emerged from a government policy agenda - at the time, the wider co-op and social enterprise sectors all said that they didn't need any more legal form options), then it kind of starts to make sense...?

@Billy Smith Thanks for this, I hope to be able to share the potential business plan soon.

@adrian ashton thanks for this, really helpful.

Type CIC into the search on https://www.workers.coop/map/

It brings up a list, also interested in why ur posting to this relatively dead forum not to workers.coop forum? Is it hard to use/register for?

@John Atherton @Nic posted in both places :)