In June this year (2022), a Special General Meeting of our Association agreed to ‘re-constitute’ itself as a Co-operative.
Why set up a Co-op?
Up till this year, WEGA operated quite comfortably with a constitution covering the basics for a volunteer-run organisation. With Birmingham City Council as owner of the sites, and a Management Agreement and Allotment Rules, it wasn’t essential to have anything more complicated. But now our sites are filling up again after 20 years with sites only half to two-thirds full. So they need more managing and more resources, and funds for buildings and other infrastructure improvements on the sites are impossible to get from the Council.
This year we were encouraged to apply for a grant from HS2 which is building the railway line very near our sites, so we had an opportunity to secure some much-needed large-scale investment which can upgrade our facilities as well as make it easier to promote allotments to the surrounding community. Up till now, we’ve been able to get smaller grants for piecemeal improvements and projects. However, large grants – over £10,000 – from public or charitable sources are only available if your organisation has ‘good governance’ and can be trusted to operate in an open and accountable way, and with adequate controls to prevent financial abuse.
So we took advice from the National Allotment Society – WEGA is a member and through them, we get our insurance cover, discounts on seeds etc. A co-op has as its basic principle of mutual interest for members, so is the governance structure the NAS recommends. Their Legal Officer Liz Bunting gave us lots of advice and guidance in the months prior to the meeting in June. Now it is agreed and set up, we are registered with the Financial Conduct Authority which oversees all Co-ops. Every plotholder has to become a Co-op member and pay for a share in the Co-op – set at the nominal amount of £1. Other people – for example, partners, family members or anyone else involved in the plot – can also become Co-op Members if they want. They are called Associates: they pay half the annual membership fees but have the same rights to take part in decisions about what happens on the sites and in the Association.
One of the clauses we had to include if we want to get large grants is about ‘no financial benefit’ for Co-op members or Committee i.e. people on the committees can’t get paid anything other than expenses, and plotholders doing jobs on the site such as repairs can’t make a profit. This is normal for organisations like ours which are run on a voluntary basis.
In the future, having a co-operative structure will be a good foundation if we want to go down the ‘Self-Management’ route rather than continue with the Council keeping most of the controls. At the moment the Council keeps most of the income generated from rents too. Self-management is a long-term possibility because at the moment the Birmingham District Allotments Confederation is trying to negotiate a better Management Agreement for all Birmingham sites and associations. The current one leaves us with too many responsibilities and inadequate resources to manage well. Over the next year or so, the WEGA Committee will be doing its best to keep Members informed so we can take any necessary decisions to safeguard the future of all the sites and protect the interests of existing and future plotholders.