Cardiff Council’s Cabinet is to discuss signing up to an innovative network, which will help the Council explore new and alternative ways of delivering services with the community.
The Council’s administration is committed to putting the co-operative agenda at the heart of the way it operates and it is being recommended the Cabinet sign up to the Co-operative Council’s Innovation Network to share best practice with other local authorities.
The network, which is made of members Councils from across the UK including a number of core cities and both Edinburgh and Glasgow provides a national voice for co-operative Councils informed by real experience and practice. Cardiff will also host a visit from the CCIN on April 14th to discuss future opportunities.
Cardiff City Council Leader Cllr Phil Bale said the Co-operative Council idea is about ensuring local ownership of public services. “This means more engagement about key decisions and more involvement from local people in designing the services they depend on, day in, day out,” he added.
“The Cabinet will be developing a series of projects and initiatives under the Cooperative Cardiff umbrella which will make a real difference to people’s lives and be central to how we develop the organisation in the years ahead.”
Among the initiatives which other co-operative Councils in the UK have implemented are a campaign to get fairer energy bills in Oldham; a scheme to encourage businesses, communities and local people to use public space to grow vegetables in Salford and empowering the area of Wingrove in Newcastle to draw down over £1million of Big Lottery Funding to help to make their neighbourhood greener and more sustainable.
Cabinet Member for Community Development, Co-operatives and Social Enterprise Cllr Peter Bradbury said, “This is a really exciting initiative which will mean the Council will be able to meet with other co-operative Councils to share new ways of working and develop innovative ideas to tackling the tough issues we all face today with dwindling budgets but a need to improve the way we provide services.
“We’ve already got some good examples of schemes we’ve used in Cardiff such as Cyd Cymru which is our scheme to get people to collectively switch energy providers to get a fairer deal with thousands signing up making almost a million pounds in savings. It’s this kind of project we want to see more of in future,” Cllr Bradbury added.
“Working co-operatively with communities holds the key to tackling today’s challenges and membership of the CCIN will mean we will be able to share innovative new approaches to turning co-operative principle into local practice, particularly in areas such as social services, leisure services and community facilities.”
