As a Labour and Co-operative Parliamentary Candidate, I’m so pleased that Swindon Labour is promising to be a Co‑operative Council.

This model of local economic investment has been successful in generating local wealth for reinvestment in Preston, Glasgow, Manchester and other local authorities in Britain.

The model sees a change to procurement practice within the Council, as well as encouraging a change within other large local procurement bodies (large businesses, the hospital, and the Police amongst others). By procuring locally, and splitting contracts out to benefit local SMEs, councils like Preston have reinvested tens of millions of pounds back into their local economy.

This progressive procurement practice sees money circulate locally and, when reinvested, it is spent on what the community most needs: regeneration of parts of the town, funding local shared energy schemes, establishing community land trusts, all of which underpin Labour’s commitments to end fuel poverty, pay the real living wage, address the problem of unaffordable rents, promote local jobs and build communities.

You can read in detail here about the Co‑operative Party’s 6 Steps to Build Community Wealth, which is the basis for the Swindon Model:

6 Steps to Build Community Wealth Using what we already have to generate local economic growth co-operatively

Read the Swindon Labour Manifesto here