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New Mutual Models
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Mutuo works with practitioners, legal specialists and the Government to develop new ownership structures for a range of public services. Current projects include: Healthcare: Making Healthcare Mutual Following Alan Milburn's announcement that the public will be given a key role in the management - and in effect become the owners - of NHS Foundation Trusts, Health Minister Hazel Blears spells out the political philosophy behind the Government's NHS reform programme in the Mutuo pamphlet Making Healthcare Mutual: a publicly funded, locally accountable NHS. She draws a clear policy between the Labour movement's co-operative roots and the Government's new direction, and indicates that the Government is committed to extending mutual ownership across the NHS, into areas such as primary care. Blears states that the new governance arrangements for foundation hospitals will be modelled on successful mutual and co-operative organisations, placing ownership in the hands of employees and patients and replacing decades Hazel of central State ownership with local public ownership. She illustrates that this reform programme is every bit as radical and progressive as that which created the NHS over fifty years ago, drawing on the traditions of social and community ownership that inspired the founders of the NHS, and placing a premium on local accountability for local services. Childcare: Child's Play The Government has committed itself to extending the provision of quality childcare and early education services. It recognises that as the economy grows, childcare provision is vital in underpinning the regeneration of our most disadvantaged communities and ensuring parents can find work or appropriate training. Mutuo believes that social enterprises offer the best hope of addressing the chronic shortage of childcare in the UK. In Child's Play: New Mutual Models for Childcare, Stephen Burke of Daycare Trust, Paloma Tarazona of Social Enterprise London and Kathryn Graham and Cliff Mills of Cobbetts Solicitors argue that the Government's National Childcare Strategy, launched in 1998, needs to be augmented by local mutual initiatives if it is to be successful in delivering for all children and parents. Mutuo has developed a Community Mutual model for childcare, which brings together staff, parents, employers, local authorities and agents to provide quality, responsive and value-for-money services. This legal structure, piloted by the Early Years Childcare Centre, Sutton, can be applied to new childcare social enterprises by local authorities, Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships and other bodies. Football: Back Home Mutuality is not new in football. Clubs including Arsenal, Leicester City and Manchester United originated as membership organisations rooted in their local communities. And more recently Supporters' Trusts, which give fans a collective say in how their clubs are run, have sprung up in clubs at all levels throughout Britain. Writing in Back Home: returning football clubs to their communities, Dr Christine Oughton, Director of the Football Governance Research Centre at the University of London, argues that the current financial crisis in football has exposed the weakness of the traditional company model, which is often over-reliant on the financial support of a small group of people, and that community ownership could provide a more sustainable business model for clubs. The report suggests that clubs should consider adopting the community mutual ownership model, a form of Co-operative Society developed by Mutuo. This would offer membership to a wider range of stakeholders including fans, local businesses and other parties with an interest in the health of the club, and thus attract greater, and more secure, investment. The report also provides examples of the possibilities that exist for transforming stadia into hubs for activities such as other sports, education, music, enterprise and healthcare, and illustrates how clubs such as Macclesfield Town and Brentford FC have already taken a lead in using their stadia more widely to raise revenue. Social Housing: The Community Housing Mutual Housing stock transfers represent one of the biggest shake-ups in social housing since the first council homes were built. A transfer occurs when a council sells off some or all of its homes to a registered social landlord, usually a housing association, if tenants agree to the move in a ballot. Although there is great diversity across the sector, many housing associations fail to deliver any real tenant ownership or control. Some have no tenant members at all, and the best of them only go part of the way by enabling tenants to comprise a small part of the membership. This does not deal with the 'us and them' problem that bedevils council housing tenants. It does not give people the ability to use their own expertise and contacts, giving tenants very little opportunity to decide what is best for them in terms of repair, servicing and day-to-day management of the housing. The Community Housing Mutual, developed by Mutuo, addresses this problem by giving tenants a constitutional stake in the management and ownership of their housing. To go with this, engaging and empowering tenants is at the centre of the activities of the organisation, through a constitutional commitment designed to promote and encourage membership and participation in decision making. The board, which of course is the key decision making body, comprises three stakeholder groups. First the tenant members elect, on the basis of OMOV, representatives from among themselves to sit on the board; secondly, the local authority nominates its own list of approved candidates, from which tenants elect more board members; thirdly, community representatives are appointed in consultation with local organisations, thus ensuring that all the necessary management and financial skills are available to carry out the board's functions. The board then appoints qualified executives to be responsible for the day-to-day business of the Housing Mutual. The Community Housing Mutual has been endorsed by the Welsh Assembly Government as their preferred ownership model for housing that is transferred out of local authority control. Speaking at a reception sponsored by the Co-operative Group and Nationwide Building Society in Cardiff on 8th May 2002, Local Government, Finance and Communities Minister Edwina Hart said: "If Councils are considering transferring their houses in conjunction with their tenants then I would like them to give serious consideration to this Model. I believe it has tremendous potential not just to improve the physical condition of the houses and estates but also to stimulate economic and social regeneration of our poorest communities." A layperson's guide to the Rule Set is available on request from the Welsh Assembly Government. All publications are available from e.Harrison@mutuo.co.uk, price £10. |
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