Photo, from left: Blase Lambert (CCH), James Wright (Co-operatives UK), Alison Hands (Lincolnshire Co-op), Mili Patel (CCIN) and Claude Hendrickson MBE (CCH)
The UK’s Real Estate Investment & Infrastructure Forum (UKREiiF) aims to “connect people, places and businesses” to drive sustainable, inclusive and transformative investment and regeneration. This year, some of those businesses were co-operatives, collaborating to raise the profile of the co-op model as a tool to create people-powered housing.
The 2025 event, held in Leeds on 20-22 May, brought together over 16,000 professionals and was opened by deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner.
“I said last year that we would get Britain building again as part of our Plan for Change – new homes, new infrastructure projects, jobs, higher living standards, strong communities and a strong economy,” she said. “We will do this by working in partnership, by backing you to build, invest and succeed … Because our vision is not just building houses, but it’s building homes for people of our country and building the communities in which they live.”
The current parliament has a target of building 1.5 million homes, which, Rayner admitted, is a stretch. “But I want to be clear that our vision for housing is about so much more than hitting one target … These must be well-designed, decent homes for local people and they must come alongside the GP surgeries, schools and parks they need too.”
She also wants “to see new players, entrepreneurs and disruptors flourish. Small and medium enterprises, community-led housing projects and councils that can disrupt the market for the better. Radically changing what we build, and who builds it, transforming the system to make it more diverse and innovative.”
These sentiments were echoed in a panel discussion, convened and supported by Lincolnshire Co-op, the Confederation of Co-operative Housing (CCH), Co-operatives UK, the Co-op Councils Innovation Network (CCIN), Central Co-op and Co-op News, who also had a stand at the event under the collective theme ‘People-powered housing’.
Blase Lambert, CEO of CCH and treasurer of Co-op Housing International (CHI) who also sits on the board of the International Cooperatice Alliance (ICA), shared examples of housing co-ops in the UK and Europe that worked with communities to regenerate areas and fulfil different tenant needs, from Lark Lane in Liverpool to Coin Street in London. These co-ops are more than just housing units, he explained, describing how some have mixed-use tenancies and communal work spaces, community theatres and cafes.
Related: Coin Street: How co-op ownership can keep the bulldozer at bay
“But the UK’s community-based housing sector is much smaller than it is in other countries; different policy decisions across Europe in the early 20th century led to different outcomes in terms of housing,” said Lambert.
Today, co-op housing accounts for 1% of delivery in the UK. In Sweden. it is 25% and in Austria, 40%.
“The co-operative economy needs to start co-operating to realise its potential,” said Lambert, adding that the mutual finance found in the co-operative banking, insurance and pensions sectors should be leveraged. “We need to find a way of bringing some existing assets in the co-operative economy forward, because there are substantive assets there, but they just sit there, not really being leveraged. There’s a lot more that the co-operative economy could do.”
He shared the example of how a group of 300+ housing co-operatives in Switzerland has leveraged more than CHF 7bn over 20 years to build new homes. “The scale and the potential of it, when you look at other countries, is massive,” he said. “We just haven’t had policy priority and the weight of enabling frameworks in the UK behind us to reach that sort of potential, but it’s absolutely doable.”
Another challenge for housing co-ops in the UK is the lack of public understanding that co-ops operate in sectors other than retail. “They are communities coming together to take control of assets and set up enterprises,” said Co-operatives UK’s policy and development lead, James Wright. “Increasingly, they include co-operatives of tenants and communities coming together to provide themselves and their neighbours with more affordable, more secure, high-quality housing.”
He described how the UK government’s commitment to double the size of the co-operative and mutual sector gives some “incredible opportunities for growth and impact in different sectors – and housing is certainly one of those”.
Another area of growth is through co-operative diversification, said Wright. “Once communities see they can make real things happen in the world through the power of collective action, they often then go through a period of diversification, where, because of the success of one initial project, they branch out and diversify into other things.
“And sometimes what they branch out and diversify into is housing.”
Wright gave the example of Plymouth Energy Community, which began as a community energy co-op before expanding into retrofit, and is now looking to build affordable, healthy homes in the heart of the city.
But there are still barriers, he added, namely an economic, commercial and administrative culture that “doesn’t take into account or consider co-operatives very often,” and legal, institutional and market conditions that “don’t cater to the distinctive way that properties need to raise finance”.
Also on the panel was Alison Hands, CEO of Lincolnshire Co-op. A consumer co-operatve with a large property division, Lincolnshire was “building houses for its members in the 19th century, and again in the 1930s between the wars,” said Hands.
“The purpose of the Lincolnshire Co-op is to bring ideas, energies and resources to make life better in communities … Consumer co-operatives have a lot of property [that] could be reutilised to effectively provide more housing and more opportunities to connect with some communities and do something a little bit different.”
One idea, she said, could be around older people coming into mixed-use community space – “but it does require people to take that initial step and to start to think about things in a very different way.”
The city of Lincoln is one of the fastest-growing young cities in the UK, but it has a lack of affordable housing for graduates seeking professional jobs, particularly in the healthcare and defence sectors. Co-op housing could help with this, she said, and “it’s a sector that we’re prepared to put some effort behind”.
Part of this affort, she added, is around awareness raising. “In the UK there is a private sector and a public sector, and for many people there’s nothing else in between. I think that’s heavily driven by education. We don’t teach children about the co-operative sector.”
Mili Patel is chair of the CCIN values and principles board – and deputy leader of the London Borough of Brent where community building and funding resident-led projects are a priority. This type of work “saves money but also ensures that social value is put back into our communities,” she said.
“This is more important than ever given that over £100m a month is being spent on temporary accommodation; housing is a real need [and] following a scrutiny report, [Brent] council decided to explore community co-op housing as an avenue of delivering co-production from residents.”
Patel wants to see a change in housing policy and stronger political will. “Housing developers build units, co-operatives build homes and communities, and that’s what’s missing in a lot of thinking,” she added. “There has to be another way, and that way is co-operatives.”
Claude Hendrickson, a Leeds-based community land trust ambassador and accredited community-led housing adviser who works with CCH, received an MBE in 2023 for for services to community self-build housing. He has been “banging on about how the community can be involved in looking to help solve the housing problem for the last 30 years”. For him, the promotion, profiling and sharing good practice examples of co-operatives is a vital tool for raising awareness of the model.
Related: Meet … Claude Hendrickson: Leading light of community self-build housing
“Being part of a co-operative gives you a collective empowerment,” he said. “It’s more than just about building houses. It’s about people getting skills, training, employment, giving the next generation an opportunity to get into construction and onto the housing ladder. Co-operatives keep buildings within the community. They keep rent affordable and give you a sense of community.”
He described how Leeds has a housing waiting list of 23,000. “Wouldn’t it be great to empower these people to be part of the solution, rather than be seen as a problem?”
For more on the 2025 UKREiiF event and the work of the organisations involved, visit uk.coop/BetterHousing
