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Chair’s Report 2024 – 2025 and Agenda 2026

PCDN has had a very busy and successful year. Some of our activities have been detailed on our Facebook page and it’s now our preferred choice of communication, and a good place to find out what is happening.

We now have three members of the committee who have graduated from the Stir to Action’s online training initiative, and are Barefoot Practitioner offering support for the democratic business sector. We have also been reaching out to other practitioners in Preston who can work with us to offer even more specialised support such as Basic Business Planning , Conflict Resolution and Basic Business Finance. This has meant that we have been able to expand the range of our activities and support offered.

We have been granted money by PCC from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund to support our work with start- ups and to help develop pre -start up groups and individuals. All the enterprises we are working with, will either generate new jobs, secure existing jobs or provide volunteering opportunities alongside the creation or sustaining of the enterprises themselves. We have been particularly keen to work with grass roots groups in hard-to-reach communities. These come in as enquiries through our website or from our work with community anchors.

For example: Teenspired : A new Social Hub for Muslim girls offering monthly support to young girls. Although not incorporated as the moment, they are working towards this in early 2026. Broadgate Food Pantry: This a community group operating a food pantry open to all on a non-discriminatory basis and will incorporate as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation in 2025. JALGOS Sports and Social Club : incorporating as a cooperative but there have been difficulties around their accounts. PCDN has assisted them with financial advice from an accountant, plus developing the skills of the Board and Acorn Architects: the first female led architects’ firm in Preston.

Workshops
Aimed at all co-ops and community businesses working in Preston. Our workshops showcased some business development planning tools, with a working session to moving from ideas to actions. We also ran a series of Digital Workshops supported by PCC, so we could work more intensively with our groups previously worked with on our Advancing a Shared Economy funding. These included Promethean Circus, Preston Pedals, Sanctuary Cookalong, Climate Action Preston, Jalgos, Teenspired and Broadgate Food Pantry. A further community event was run jointly with Kind Communities CIC, Enterprise: My Community. This focused on the resettler groups – especially those from professional/ business background requiring help navigating the business set-up landscape of the UK. Also invited were Food Hubs who were not registered as either charities or CIC but who required advice on a formal set-up with a view to applying for grant funding.

New Programmes.
Working with Kind Communities CiC we have also launched two new programmes: Lady Boss 1 providing targeted business support for non-registered home-based cooks from minoritised communities, who currently cook and sell food to the public and earn more than £1000 per annum. The group has decided to set up a food cooperative and is currently working with PCC and UCLAN amongst others as a supplier.

Also, we have CoLab as our newest project offering a set of workshops and specialist mentoring to help local artists in Preston and its environs develop a cooperative. This will offer gallery and workshop space to these new artists. Thank you for your support. Let’s cooperate!

Gaynor Wood
Chair of PCDN

AGENDA for the ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING. To be held on TUESDAY 03
MARCH 2026, 11.30 am at Catherine Beckett Community Centre, 112

Deepdale Rd, Preston PR1 5AR
Also available on Zoom at: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89996198203?pwd=1KprYLoLS1vcT0wa4ekGMzBsg5iZaO.1

1. Apologies.
2. Minutes. Unfortunately, the minutes of the last AGM were not taken at the time of the Meeting.
3. Matters Arising from the Minutes.
4. Chair’s Report.
5. Financial report.
6. New business including resolutions if applicable. Please ensure that these are sent to the committee a week before the AGM. Email us at admin@prestoncoopdevelopment.org
7. Election of Directors.
8. AOB
9. Adjournment

Please note that parking at the Catherine Beckett Centre is extremely limited.

Preston Cooperative Development Network.

I would like to give you notice of our upcoming AGM. It will be on TUESDAY 03 MARCH 2026 ,  11.30.

The AGM will be held at Catherine Beckett Community Centre, 112 Deepdale Rd, Preston PR1 5AR and will also be available on Zoom

Details of the Zoom, the Agenda, the Minutes from last year and the accounts will be sent out in the next week and will be available on this website. Please let me know if you have anything that you might wish to speak about at meeting under AOB.

Pease email  if you intend to attend the meeting at admin@prestoncoopdevelopment.org

Best wishes

Gaynor Wood

Chair of PCDN

CHAIR’S UPDATES

Dear Friends and Members of PCDN,

 I’m always glad to be able to update you on what we have doing but these last 12 months have been particularly exciting. So, what have we been doing?

We have been funded over the last year from the Advancing a Shared Economy in Preston and the UK Shared Prosperity  allocated to us from Preston City Council. This money was  spent on working with community groups, offering micro grants and paying our specialist consultants to give a wide range of advice on cooperative business start-ups.

As you know, PCDN is run by unpaid volunteers. Neither I as Chair, or our Society Secretary or Treasurer or any member of the Board receives any payment. We keep our running costs to a minimum.  We do not have an office. We do not have administrative support. So, we were very glad that we were able to use some of the UKSPF money to pay for a temporary, part time project manager with extensive experience as coops business advisor to join us. Recently we have been able to appoint on a temporary, part time basis two enthusiastic and community focused people who will become our new cooperative business advisors.

However, most of our funding was used to provide support for people in disadvantaged, hard to reach communities in Preston, because we believe that local people coming together can solve local issues. This is the practical application of the Preston Model at grassroots level. We are remodelling the Preston Model.

Let me tell you in a bit more detail about those new businesses we have helped to grow:

Community Energy Preston group are trying to locally owned, renewable energy in the Preston and wider area and are hoping to open a share offer to local people in March 2025. Our other projects are the Community Retro Fit+  project at Brookfield, we continue to support Deeds Not Words coop based at Edith Rigby House,  the bike coop, Preston Pedals and also  The PDF our digital company, which is developing closer links with undergraduate and graduate students at Manchester Metropolitan University

For our most recent ASEP project we piloted a new community outreach strategy Community Capacity Building  which combined training, mentoring programmes and micro-grants to help people develop cooperative solutions to local issues. We provided bespoke start-up support workshops and sessions with nine community groups, four of who have decided to incorporate as a new coop or social enterprise, two others are hoping to incorporate later and the remaining three still being supported. Groups included Broadgate Pantry, Teenspired and Prometheus Circus, JALGOS and Acorn Architects and a group of young people from WotWudUDo,. We are also supporting a pop-up event to trial the   development of a much-needed Artists led coop in Preston.

Using our UKSPF funding we have provided 99 attendees with free, in-person training on a range of topics including – Basic Business Planning, Conflict Resolution, Basic Business Finance and Negotiation. Later this month we finished running a set of four digital workshops for our coops. The sessions helped people to understand how to   use WordPress  in order to construct and manage a website.

We have run a  dedicated business incubation, growth and support programme,  for cooks from marginalised communities, improving their skillset and chances of business income and success. This 6-session course, Lady Boss  saw PCDN acting as business incubator for home-based BME run food businesses, nurturing and supporting them to incorporation stage, and beyond. We included sessions business structure, business planning, managing finances, branding/ marketing and Food Safety compliance (training provided by Kind Communities CiC) and invited a well known food influencer, Rooji The Foodie, to come and speak to the ladies. 

Together with Community Capacity Building and Lady Boss, we have developed and run two new and radical schemes which working within communities at a grassroots level.

We have established new connections with Lancashire LOCAL and Lancashire BOOST (and 30 Lancashire Boost Business Advisors attended a training session on how to support new coops) which will lead to further opportunities to keep PCDN relevant and focussed.

As Chair I must have an eye for the future and whilst the Board are keen to continue working with local communities, we need to explore other funding streams to help us to keep on helping our communities.  Please join us and support us to keep working with people who need us. If you are interested in any of the opportunities discussed here, please do contact us on admin@ prestoncoopdevelopment.org

Let’s keep co-operating,

Dr. Gaynor Wood,

Chair PCDN

Updates: AGM, Annual Recap, What’s next…

Dear Friends and Members of PCDN,

In my occasional newsletters I’m always glad to be able to update you on what we have doing but these last 12 months have been particularly exciting. So, what have we been doing?

We have been funded over the last year from the Advancing A Shared Economy in Preston and the UK Shared Prosperity Funds allocated to us from Preston City Council. The funding that we have received was spent on working with community groups, offering micro grants and paying our specialist consultants to give a wide range of advice on cooperative business start-ups.

As you know, PCDN is run by unpaid volunteers. Neither I as Chair, or our Society Secretary or Treasurer or any member of the Board receives any payment. We keep our running costs to a minimum.  We do not have an office. We do not generally pay expenses. We do not have administrative support. So, we were very glad that we were able to use some of the UKSPF money to pay for a temporary, part time project manager with extensive experience as coops business advisor to join us. Recently we have been able to appoint on a temporary, part time basis two enthusiastic and community focused people who will become our new cooperative business advisors.

However, most of our funding was used to provide support for people in disadvantaged, hard to reach communities in Preston, because we believe that local people coming together can solve local issues. This is the practical application of the Preston Model at grassroots level. We are remodelling the Preston Model.

Let me tell you in a bit more detail about those new businesses we have helped to grow:

Community Energy Preston group are trying to locally owned, renewable energy in the Preston and wider area and are hoping to open a share offer to local people in March 2025. Our other projects are the Community Retro Fit+  project at Brookfield, we continue to support Deeds Not Words coop based at Edith Rigby House, and the bike coop, Preston Pedals. The PDF our digital company, is developing closer links with undergraduate and graduate students at Manchester Metropolitan University 

For our most recent ASEP project we piloted a new community outreach strategy which combined training, mentoring programmes and micro-grants to help people develop cooperative solutions to local issues. We provided bespoke startup support workshops and sessions with nine community groups, four of who have decided to incorporate as a new coop or social enterprise, two others are hoping to incorporate later and the remaining three still being supported. Groups included Broadgate Pantry, Teenspired and Prometheus Circus, a group from WotWudU Do, JALGOS and Acorn Architects. We are also supporting a pop-up event to trial the   development of a much-needed Artists led coop in Preston.

Using our UKSPF funding we have provided 99 attendees with free, in-person training on a range of topics including – Basic Business Planning, Conflict Resolution, Basic Business Finance and Negotiation. Later this month we will be running a set of three digital workshops to which anyone who has worked with us before is entitled to attend. This will include learning how to use WordPress to construct and manage a website. 

We will also be running a dedicated business incubation, growth and support service for cooks from minoritised communities, improving their skillset and chances of business income and success. This 5-session course, Cooks into Business,  will see PCDN acting as business incubator for home-based BME run food businesses, nurturing and supporting them to incorporation stage, and beyond. We will include business structure, business planning, managing finances, branding/ marketing and Food Safety compliance (training provided by Kind Communities CiC. 

Together with the community pilot and this pilot for home-based cooks, we have developed and run two new and radical schemes which working within communities at a grassroots level. 

We have established new connections with Lancashire LOCAL and Lancashire BOOST (and 30 Lancashire Boost Business Advisors attended a training session on how to support new coops) which will lead to further opportunities to keep PCDN relevant and focussed.

As Chair I must have an eye for the future and whilst the Board are keen to continue working with local communities, we need to focus on other funding streams to develop and keep helping our communities.  Please join us and support us to keep working with people who need us. If you are interested in any of the opportunities discussed here, please do contact us on admin@ prestoncoopdevelopment.org

Let’s keep co-operating, 

Dr. Gaynor Wood, 

Chair PCDN 

PS Our next AGM will be 11  February 2025, and more information will be sent out shortly.  Please keep the date free and come along. 

Following the success of the previous workshop series PCDN (Preston Cooperative Development Network) are continuing the cooperative development programme with several local groups and social enterprises. The next stage of workshops will take place in October and November. This round of workshops will feature themes such as:

• Basic Business Planning
• Conflict Resolution in Business
• Basic Business Finance
• Negotiation in Business

These workshops will be led by two new instructors to the series, Craig Lawrenson and Joseph Buglass.

Craig Lawrenson [Below] is an award-winning business advisor who has been running businesses most of his adult life. Craig has a true passion for supporting the start-up and growth of new business ventures and developing people’s ideas, supporting the start-up of over 6,000 ventures in the past 14 years.

He delivers workshops on finance and accounting and has an unparalleled knowledge in business start-up, self-assessment and in work benefits. Craig will be hosting the Basic Business Planning as well as the Basic Business Finance workshops sessions.

Our other instructor is Joseph Buglass [Below]. Joe has spent time in both the corporate and HE sectors whilst setting up and running micro businesses along the way. Whilst in the HE Sector he discovered a passion for helping young people to set up their own businesses and has spent the last 20 years doing just that. He’s the author of the Amazon bestseller “Brilliant Business Ideas” which you can find here [Brilliant Business Ideas – The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Profitable Creativity : Buglass, Joe, Benn Joseph, Benn, Joseph: Amazon.com.be: Books]. Joe will be conducting the workshops on Conflict Resolution in Business and Business Negotiation.

This next stage of the workshop series will happen in Preston Town Hall during October and November. If you’d like to know more about this workshops series and perhaps are interested in attending yourself please get in touch with:

admin@prestoncoopdevelopment.org

People living in the fifteen pitches of a traveller site in the Preston are facing an uncertain 2021. Back in the 80’s the travellers were given their own site on Leighton Street through a bequest from the University of Central Lancashire. They have lived there peaceably ever since.

But in 2018 site owners Lancashire County Council decided to offload the site to save money. And Preston Cooperative Development Network has been battling away ever since, helping the residents secure their future.