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

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