How was the 2025 International Year of Cooperatives for you and your organisation?
The Confederation of Co-operative Housing had a fantastic International Year. We celebrated will all of our members through member events and, in particular, our 2025 Annual Conference – ‘Building a better world together’. We launched a series of videos with our Celebrating our Pioneers project, and we also demonstrated the unique power of co-operative housing to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals with the launch of our Wayshaper Sustainable Homes toolkit. This is co-operative action delivering global goals at a local level.
We worked with other co-operative bodies to launch the Fund for International Co-operative Development earlier in the year, and we participated on a global level through membership of Cooperative Housing International, launching the International Legal Research and Analysis Initiative: The Law on Cooperative Housing in the Hague. We also contributed through our global housing sectoral involvement with the International Cooperative Alliance.
Our members celebrated with us, winning national awards, having celebratory events and over 100 of them applied to use the logo for the International Year. We closed by awarding our International Year award to David Rodgers who has inspired housing co-operatives both in the UK and globally through his work in the movement.
Related: Opportunity knocks for the UK housing co-op sector
What are your hopes for 2026?
Looking ahead, CCH is preparing for the next phase of growth and development. Our hopes for 2026 come out of our Manifesto for Change which we launched just before the last general election. It sets out a number of key recommendations that will drive growth in the UK housing co-operative and community led housing sector.
We are making great headway with our asks, thanks to the commitment to double the size of the co-operative sector by government. We look forward to working towards legislation for a co-operative housing tenure, establishing a dedicated financial intermediary, a presumption in favour of disposing public land and buildings to co-operatives, and the promotion of new forms of community led housing.
There is also great excitement in our sector about the possible establishment of a Co-operative Development Agency and we look forward to contributing to the call for evidence. The International Year may be ending, but the work, the spirit, and the vision of the co-operative movement here in the UK is only growing stronger.
