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Updated 28th May 2020: The deadline has been extended to the 31st May – apply now!

Power to Change is running a longitudinal research project with the Young Foundation to learn more about how Community Business has adapted, managed and innovated so far and as we progress through the COVID19 outbreak

They want to hear from you about how the COVID-19 crisis is impacting your community business and your local community. Anyone from a community business (leaders, staff or volunteers) can share experiences of the pandemic over a 12 week period. Regular activities and discussions will allow you to share your experiences while connecting to others in a virtual setting – at a time that is convenient to you.

They will also be offering cash prize draws and other incentives for those participating. If this is something you’re interested in, please use this link to register interest.

*We updated this blog on the 21st May to include the Coronavirus Community Support Fund

It’s now a little over seven weeks since the UK Lockdown was announced, in an effort to control the spread of COVID-19. Things have changed – some a little, some a lot – and so here’s our latest round up of the guidance, support and information out there. We are continuing to work remotely and are fully available to you – please do get in touch if you have questions or concerns that we might be able to help with.

General Business Information

The latest Government advice for business is here

The Coronavirus Job Retention – or furlough – Scheme has been extended. Nothing will change until the end of July, with employers being expected to ‘“share with the government the cost of paying salaries,” from August through to October

The Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) is now available through participating lenders. Start your search at the British Business Bank webpage

The Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS) provides financial support to businesses across the UK that are losing revenue, and seeing their cashflow disrupted, as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak and that can benefit from £50,000 or less in finance.

The team at Good Finance are providing a COVID-19 Resource Hub and also have a useful ‘Is Social Investment Right For Us?‘ wizard on their website, if you are considering your funding options at the moment

The Social Investment Business are providing a resilience and Recovery Loan Fund. The twenty-minute application and eligibility checker is here

Support for Co-operatives

Co-operatives UK dedicated Coronavirus webpage covers government support, HR advice, webinars of interest and more – it’s regularly updated.

Five episodes of their More than A Shop podcast are now available here

The Co-operatives College has moved it’s Youth Series online and is working to get their other resources online as fast as possible

We remain available to support our clients and to discuss new support – please do get in touch.

Support for Community Businesses

Power to Change have launched up to £12 million of emergency support to help community business in England during the coronavirus crisis. They have also supported Stir To Action, enabling them to provide their New Economy workshops free of charge – all are now fully booked but you can sign up to a waiting list here

Plunkett Foundation have a dedicated COVID-19 webpage and are also offering one to one support for community businesses across the UK in partnership with The Co-operative. They are also running weekly peer to peer connections sessions for Community Pubs (Tuesdays, 4pm) and Community Shops (Wednesdays, 6.30pm)

The More Than A Pub programme been re-focused to support the needs of trading community pub businesses in England, alongside those community pub groups who have already received support from the programme.

If you would like to support and shop at Community Business at this time check the Power To Change map here

Funders and lenders are all active and present on social media, and they – and we – want to support you. Find your funders web pages and channels, connect with organisations like yours to get support and advice from your peers. Please continue to contact us with any questions. We are committed to supporting you, our clients through this, and to there being a healthy sector at the end of it.

We can get through this, together.

As we enter our second tranche of a three-week lockdown, it is perhaps a good time to pause and reflect on the momentous events of the last month, its effect on Co-op and Community Finance (CCF), its clients, staff and board members. Our Operations Manager, Alain Demontoux, pauses for thought.

Here at CCF, half the team are used to working from home, with Ian Rothwell (Investment Manager) and Tim Coomer (Development Manager) both operating from their respective home offices in Southampton and Devizes. Anne Wilks (Accounting and Administration Manager) and I, on the other hand, had to quickly digitally dismantle the head office in Bristol and move it to our homes in Bristol. It felt like that saying, ‘if your house was on fire what would you take first?’! Whilst Ian and Tim work remotely, they are reliant on the back-office support we provide in Bristol in the form of our central servers and our loan and accounting management systems. On the Thursday before lockdown, I spent six hours on the phone trying to talk to Team Viewer in Germany to establish the remote working software for us both. When I finally got through, the poor guy at the other end of the phone said with a long, tired sigh, “suddenly the whole world wants our product!”

A month on, and it’s extraordinary how quickly we have adapted. A ten person Zoom board meeting yesterday made me think, “why don’t we do it like this more often”. My most overused phrase of this pandemic, in both a professional and personal context, has been that necessity is the mother of invention, and indeed it is.

We have been working around the clock talking to our borrowers and back-office clients. The key has been to establish how we can help and what they need from us in order to help them survive the financial and economic challenges of these unprecedented times, with needs changing daily. Our ability, as a small team, to react quickly is underscored by the fact the co-op and community sector is particularly good at communication, whether it be borrowers, clients or partners like the Plunkett Foundation, Power to Change and Co-operatives UK.

We’re also proud to have continued to lend through the pandemic with recent support for both employee owned PrimePac Solutions and Slaley Community Shop. We are very much open for business and are here to help.

There is no doubt it’s been a difficult few weeks, but we see some signs that direct government support, through the small business grant fund, are beginning to reach our borrowers. Couple this with our intervention for many borrowers, and fingers crossed for the much anticipated furlough schemes, and we can see there is light! As we start our second three-week lockdown it will be interesting to read these words again to see how the landscape looks then. Certainly, we are feeling the early shoots of a refocus towards what will be needed to support coops and community businesses when this is all done.

When some semblance of normal economic activity returns, we will be there, as we are now, to help and support the sector in any way we can.

At a time when many businesses have temporarily closed, an employee-owned company in south Wales has increased production to cope with a big rise in demand for its packaging services.

In recent weeks PrimePac Solutions Ltd in Ebbw Vale has been inundated with orders to package sanitising and cleaning products. It has also bought a mixer to enable it to produce its own sanitiser. The company has taken on extra staff and is running two or three shifts a day. It has drawn down previously arranged loans from Co-op Loan Fund and Co-operative & Community Finance to help with cashflow.

PrimePac Solutions was set up in 2005 following closure of a Dutch-owned packaging company in Ebbw Vale. Nineteen former employees used their redundancy money to set up a new business with help from Wales Co-operative Centre and Co-operative & Community Finance. After a difficult  initial period the business has grown to over 50 employees and an annual turnover of £3m. Today PrimePac has net assets of £2.5m.

It has the plant, equipment and experience to manufacture and fill a wide range of packaging formats and sizes for many different sectors, from 5mg powder sachets to 1 litre glass bottles. It has major customers in the homecare, gardening, health and personal care sectors.

PrimePac was already planning to expand before the coronavirus crisis. It had been awarded a major contract to package shoe care products for a very well-known shoe brand. Earlier this year it took on the lease of a 35,000 sq ft warehouse, on the same estate as its 27,000 sq ft manufacturing facility, to hold extra stock. However, with the temporary closure of all but essential retail shops there was almost no demand for the shoe care products. Fortunately for PrimePac this downturn coincided with a massive increase in demand for packing and supplying sanitising and cleaning products.

Ian Rothwell, investment manager at Co-operative & Community Finance, said: “We are delighted to help PrimePac again, almost 15 years after we provided finance for the start up. This is a successful business with a very experienced workforce and management team. PrimePac is a flexible contractor that can make and pack almost anything for anyone and as such should be well placed to survive and even prosper through these uncertain times.”

Thank you to all our clients who have contacted us recently about concerns amid the COVID-19 situation. We are really glad that you are making contact and asking questions – please do continue to do this. 

The situation is changing rapidly and we would encourage you all to get the most up to date news from trusted channels – the Government, Department of Health, the National Health Service and the World Health Organisation

The latest Government advice for business is here

Further resources including handwashing and public health posters, and business continuity planning advice and templates, are linked in this post from Plunkett Foundation.

A statement from Social Investors including us, detailing support available, has been released and is on the Good Finance website along with their COVID-19 Resource Hub

The Architectural Heritage Fund are currently aiming to assess and award grants as advertised

Power to Change have paused their general programmes to focus on supporting grantees through the crisis

If you would like to support and shop at Community Business at this time check the Power To Change map here

Funders and lenders are all active and present on social media – find their pages and channels, and connect with organisations like yours to get support and advice from your peers.

And please, continue to contact us with any questions. We are committed to supporting our clients through this and to there being a healthy sector at the end of it.

[This post was updated on the 3rd April to include links to The Architectural Heritage Fund, Power to Change pausing programmes, The Princes Trust, and the Good Finance Resource Hub, and to change the image used]

Power to Change has suspended all current funding programmes, including More Than A Pub, as it is focusing its attention on supporting community businesses affected by COVID-19. All future rounds of this programme are currently paused. 

Please note: Any applicant part way through the More Than A Pub application process will be considered for Power to Change support. Please contact Tim to discuss your application.

FAQs are here, do keep checking back for more information, and sign up Power To Change newsletter for weekly updates.

Plunkett Foundation Chief Executive James Alcock has written an open letter to the groceries industry highlighting the threat to supply for community shops, and calling for support for both these shops and the vulnerable residents they serve, during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Specifically, the letter calls for

• reduced minimum orders,
• priority deliveries to rural and more isolated community shops,
• smaller, more frequent deliveries,
• implementation of rules in cash and carry stores to prevent panic buying and unfair distribution of stock.

He has also made the letter available as a template for those within community shops to send to local MPs, to urge them to take whatever action they can to ensure this important matter is highlighted across government and the groceries industry so that action is taken. The template letter is available to download on this page

Community shops have a huge role to play in provisioning residents who cannot get to – or need to avoid – larger supermarkets. We would echo James’ call for this action and urge community shops to add their voice by sending the letter to their MP.

The Government announcement on Friday 20th March that all pubs, cafes and restaurants were to close as part of the coronavirus response was unsurprising and a necessary step in these unusual times. It’s imperative that we all work together, that we co-operate, for the greater good of our communities right now.

We are glad to hear that planning rules will be relaxed so pubs and restaurants can operate as hot food takeaways during the coronavirus outbreak, enabling them to remain at the hearts of communities and provide support for those who need it. We would urge you to use these services where you can, and to support community shops near you too – doing so can help spread the load on the bigger shops while supporting the smaller ones that we all want to see in our local areas.

Community Pub ingenuity is thriving, as we would expect. We’re already hearing from Community Pubs who are extending their role and services. Some are receiving deliveries and parcels, others are sending out recipe boxes and instructions so people can cook their favourite pub meals at home. If your Community Pub is doing this, do let us know – send us details along with your website and Facebook Page or Twitter handle and we will be glad to promote.

The latest information and support can be found at the links below

Business support from HM Government from today 23rd March

General Covid-19 business information including Coronavirus Job Retention scheme, deferring VAT and Income Tax payments, business rates holidays and grants of £10,000 to £25,000 for businesses depending on rateable value and rate relief.

Plunkett Foundation COVID-19 Live is covering the latest advice and updates for all community business.

This situation is changing so fast, and so dramatically, it can feel hard to remain positive at the moment. But we are warmed by the stories we are hearing of communities coming together and supporting one another. This is what co-operative and community business is about – we are proud to be part of it, with you. Do keep getting in touch if your co-op or community business are facing any financial difficulties as a result of this – we are here to help, as best we can.

As the COVID-19 situation unfolds, many organisations and businesses are trialling online services such as live streaming for events, and platforms for holding meetings online. Parts of  The British Library collection are accessible online, musicians are live streaming and even book launches are being moved online. The creativity and ingenuity on display, as well as the determination to keep people connected, is heartening in trying times.

As well as reducing isolation and maintaining connection, technology can also help with running essential meetings online – with all the planning and swift decision making required at the moment, now is not the time to stop meeting, it’s just the time to do it differently. We know that some co-ops have cancelled or postponed their AGMs and other meetings, and that many are considering the use of technology to assist remote working. If you are considering this, we’re aware that this can be daunting. You’ll be wondering about tools and tactics. We have some suggestions…

For the former, check out this list of tools curated by co-op DOT PROJECT. This is an ever-growing list of tools that DOT PROJECT have found or been told about – they have not used them all and so it’s not a recommendations list, but it covers collaboration, online conferencing, and tools to help with online discussions. We’re grateful to DOT PROJECT for making this freely available.

Outlandish had advice on both tools and tactics. They recommended both Whereby and Zoom and gave the top tip that all attendees use the ‘mute’ function on their phone, tablet or device if they are not speaking. This ‘takes some practice but makes a massive difference to everyone being able to hear everything’

Tactics can be a little more old school. We spoke to Nathan Brown of Cooperantics, experts in Co-operative Skills training. Nathan advised…

‘A general rule of thumb is you need excellent chairing, to prepare the paperwork in advance, share an agenda, ensure that the tech you use allows people to signal if they want to speak, and take comfort breaks if you go over 90 minutes.  From past experience of chairing online and teleconferences, I recommend that groups use the “round” approach where every person is invited to speak in turn.  This ensures everyone gets heard and it avoids the need to work out who wants to speak.  Explain at the start how the meeting will work, and really focus on excellent chairing.’

We are all getting to grips with new ways of working. We are fortunate that there are so many great tools out there. If you have one you would like to recommend, or have tips on online meetings, we’d love to add them to this post – do let us know