03 February 2012

Size of worker co-op sector

I collated some info for the last worker co-operative council meeting (Co-operatives UK's representative body for worker co-ops). I thought you might be interested in some of the figures.

This does come with a warning however: These are my own own calculations and not that of our specialists. These may not be the same as our official figures in the more rigorous annual report on the co-operative economy and don't include large employee trust co-operatives like John Lewis (they just massively scew the figures by a few £bn).

This table does however give an indication of the split of worker co-ops by different industry sectors, which may be of interest.

Industry Sector Numbers Turnover
Food Retail & Wholesale 41 £74,398,944
Non-food retail 23 £51,047,281
Engineering and Technology 8 £30,947,437
Media and Communications 32 £4,544,368
Newspaper & Publishing 8 £4,302,618
Research and Consultancy 8 £2,871,121
Education, Employment and Training 40 £2,435,466
Business Services 30 £2,416,334
Business Consultancy 19 £1,494,555
Environmental Services
IT Services
21
14
£1,336,807
£1.186,368
Health & Social Care 25 £1,103,153
Creative Arts 34 £1,074,211
Childcare 30 £961,133
Manufacturing 15 £532,305
Financial Services 5 £410,023
Architects 9 £408,706



Community 12 £295,697
Energy 8 £165,624
Leisure and Tourism 11 £122,332
CafĂ©, Catering 9 £36,501
Agricultural 17 £23,681
(blank) 12
Grand Total 431 £181,314,665

Unfortunately as there is no specific worker co-op legal form and therefore regsiter, we only know figures for the worker co-ops that tell us and usually only from our members.

On the map below are all the worker co-ops we know about (and if their members). If you know about a worker co-op that isn't on this list, let me know (it may well be classed as another type of co-op or we just don't know it). A case in point is Northern Ireland and I don't believe there are only 2 in the whole of Northern Ireland.

I've also llisted if their paid up member of Co-opertives UK.  Membership is voluntary and the annual subscription may feel a lot for the smallest co-ops (£75), but the more members we have the stronger we all are.
 If you want to tell me about a worker co-op not listed below, or help me recruit a non member to Co-operatives UK  get in touch.

Also health warning about locations, due to the way "geocoding" is done business probably is not exactly where it says it is on the map and there will undboutly be errors, (first time i did 2 were suposedly in the US..)


View Worker Co-ops in the UK in a full screen map

No comments: