cooperativeBusinessPicMoving from the wrap around direct support of the pubic sector and taking services into another social business form can be an amazing journey. It can also be a rocky road fraught with misunderstanding and hesitancy.

Co-operatives UK, working with Mutual Ventures, have produced a short primer on how to take public sector services into the cooperative domain.

Their guided journey manual, an overview on developing the big idea, taking your plans to realisation and how to get started, is available online here (.pdf document 564Kb).

This document is of interest to those considering the emergence of public sector mutuals, however it does also offer sound thinking and guidance on frameworks of action for any social or charitable business getting ready to flower.

What is it we should be thinking about? Co-operative Business District: a guided journey to discover your own public service co-operative destination can tell you.

Peter Marsh and David Fairhurst, writing in The Guardian recently have sought to take the current temperature of how the government’s new initiative on employee owned co-operatives is proceeding.

Their early findings are ‘…that it is a lot of hard work, but well worth it’.

TPPlaw also have a Mutuals for Local Authority Service Delivery document available from their website. (Free subscription to download).

TPP offer their professional wisdom on governance cases, development and change in the work force and how estates management inside a local authority can be brokered under a mutuals banner.

Are mutuals the governance form for the Big Society?