Corporate CV

Somerset Co-operative Services (SCS) mission is to promote the application of international co-operative principles, to help people establish new social enterprises and to enable social enterprises to work together to be financially, environmentally and socially sustainable. We aim to provide high quality services to our user members and secure, fairly rewarded work to our worker members.

SCS CIC began trading in March 2008, taking over most of the business of UpStart Services Ltd. The need for our services arises from our position as the only co-operative development body based in Somerset and Dorset, coupled with our specialist interests that fill important niches in the co-operative movement nationally. We draw on our roots in Somerset for local projects, but we do not claim any monopoly on service provision in any area. We are no less interested in national and regional projects.

There is a growing demand for social enterprise expertise, and the co-operative movement can claim a depth of experience in the field. The shift to brokered business advice, restrictions on local authority funds and the mainstreaming of social enterprise support have meant that CDBs can no longer rely on local core funding. There are now numerous opportunities to tender for individual contracts and specific projects, and this is the basis of our business model. However, we do not take a passive approach to the marketplace: it is our intention to campaign for and initiate co-operative solutions which we will then develop.

Membership
Our founder members are Sandra Aldworth, Alex Lawrie and Kate Whittle

Alex Lawrie is a founder member of Stepping Stones and Cornerstone Housing Co-ops, Footprint Workers Co-operative and Chapeltown Credit Union, Yeovil Car Pool, Fairground SW (a community co-op) and of UpStart Services (the forerunner of SCS, founded in 1997). He studied politics at Leeds University, worked for Yeovil College as a lecturer in IT, has received training in Fundraising and Training Skills from the DSC, and in Planning for Real from the Neighbourhood Initiatives Foundation (he is NIF training associate). He is the author of ‘Empowering the Earth’ (Green Books, 2000). His role in SCS includes work on housing co-ops, LETS, car pools, secondary co-operatives and co-operative development infrastructure. Alex became SFEDI accredited in 2008.

Kate Whittle has been working with co-operatives, both in the UK and overseas, for over 20 years. She has worked as a researcher, trainer, mentor and development worker for a wide range of co-operatives and social enterprises. In 2003, along with colleagues Bob Cannell and David Dean, she set up Co-operative Business Consultants www.cbc.coop, with the aim of promoting co-operative and participative management methods and techniques. Kate is an expert in co-operative organisational development, teambuilding and facilitation: her website www.cooperantics.co.uk offers a range of free downloadable support materials, for businesses and organisations working in co-operative and participative ways. From 2003 to 2005 Kate served as a Director of the Phone Co-op. Kate became SFEDI accredited and achieved the ILM VRQ Level 5 Certificate in Social Enterprise Support in 2009.

Sandra Aldworth qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1986 and is a member of the Tax and Finance and Management Faculties of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. She worked in practice until 1990 and then branched out into industry. Most recently working as South West Finance Manager for the Museums Libraries and Archives Council, Sandra was recently made redundant and is now fully self employed. She has a wide variety of experience in many different industries. She is a founder member of SCS, and is responsible for year end accounts for over fifteen co-operatives and social enterprises, in some cases also providing payroll and quarterly management accounts.

Recent projects
For new social enterprises such as Go! Co-operative, 10 Radio CIC and Lightweight Community Transport we provide consultancy, project management and executive services to steer their businesses through complex launches.

We were engaged by Enterprise 4 Inclusion to help the Roborough Community Partnership carry out consultations for an affordable housing development, Otter Rotters, a recycling co-operative in East Devon, to develop a new timber recycling project, and to help launch Pro Health Initiative, a centre for complementary therapies.

We helped the Ecological Land Co-operative from first conception through to full business plan and successful launch.

We carried out a feasibility study in 2005 for the Single Parent Action Network, to assess the potential for a homebased childcare service in Bristol.

Between 2001 and 2006, UpStart provided financial services including bookkeeping and loan administration for Radical Routes. From 2004 to 2007, we provided a secretariat for Co-operatives SW, including editing newsletters and their website.

As part of the C-Change consortium, we provided consultancy to Ty Brethyn Housing Co-op to help them found an enduring Buddhist community near Llangollen.

We provide an accounts service for over twenty co-operatives, including year end accounts, management accounts and payroll.
We joined a partnership carrying out a feasibility study, funded by RISE, to investigate how existing models of business support for social enterprises can be adapted and adjusted to help develop appropriate support infrastructure in rural Somerset. This included carrying out a comprehensive review of social enterprise business support needs in Somerset, and assessing other models of social enterprise development support in similar settings in the UK and Europe.

In 2005-07, we worked on an Esmee Fairbairn Foundation-funded project to use secondary co-operatives as a way of replicating successful co-operative business ideas. This led to the formation of the Good Fuel Co-operative, a secondary co-op of cooking oil recycling projects.
2006-07 saw us follow this up with a project developing new community enterprise incubators in the South of England, with funding from the National Lottery.

SCS CIC is a co-operative development body member of Co-ops UK, an additions member of RISE and an associate member of Radical Routes.