Read Our Community-Led Response to the Law Commission Consultation on Cooperatives and Community Benefit Societies
Introduction
The Law Commission’s consultation on their review of the legal framework governing cooperatives and community benefit societies (CCBS) closed on 10th December 2024.
A Law Commission consultation is a process initiated by the Law Commission (the body that reviews and recommends changes to the law) to gather input from the public, legal professionals, academics, and other stakeholders on a particular legal issue or area of law under review. It’s a formal step in the process of law reform, aiming to ensure that any proposed changes are well-informed, practical, and reflective of public needs and opinions.
Making legal processes accessible and inclusive
Although the Law Commission calls for public participation in its consultation, legal consultative processes can often be opaque and responses are often led by the legal profession and sector bodies. These processes often exclude Black and *minoritised communities, **grassroots groups and other marginalised groups.
This exclusion often stems from systemic barriers – such as inaccessible legal language, lack of awareness about consultations, and insufficient representation in the institutions driving these processes. Additionally, consultations typically rely on written submissions, which can disadvantage people without the resources, time, or confidence to engage in formal legal processes. Cultural and linguistic differences, distrust in legal systems due to historical injustices, and limited outreach to grassroots organisations further exacerbate this gap. As a result, the experiences and priorities of these communities may be underrepresented, leading to reforms that fail to address—or even perpetuate—inequalities or exclusionary practices.
Part of our work as community lawyers is to proactively address the systemic barriers that exclude communities from legal processes. Recognising the importance of co-operatives and community benefit societies for community organising, equitable community ownership, democratic governance and economic justice, we developed a community-led response to the Law Commission’s consultation that centred the experiences of Black and minoritised communities through a consultation process.
Sector responses
Our response to this consultation is not intended to be exhaustive but is designed to sit alongside other sector responses, offering an underrepresented perspective that we hope can be a valuable contribution when considering legal reform.
In preparing our responses, we reviewed or engaged with other leading sector responses, including Co-Operatives UK, proposals by the CCBSA Lawyers Working Group, the Charity Law Association Working Group, and draft responses or views from a number of leading law firms. On many issues our response concurs with (and in some cases cross-refers to) proposals by these groups. In some cases, we are agnostic to the reforms proposed by other responses. However, on some issues, we differ from the submissions of the abovementioned groups – led first and foremost by the experiences of our consultees on these issues.
We fully appreciate that some proposals, including those outlined in our response, will require further discussion and evolution. We’d welcome the opportunity to continue representing the views of the community organisations that we collaborate with, in consultation with them, through the legislative development process.
Key Areas We Responded To
Our submission to the Law Commission focused on the following key areas:
- The proposed new statutory definitions of a Co-Operative and a Community Benefit Society
- Whether charitable Community Benefit Societies should cease to be exempt charities (i.e. be regulated by the Charity Commission)
- Society officers, their duties, and what information about them should be published
- Filling and compliance requirements, including penalties
- Powers of the registrar
- Audit requirements
You can read our response in full here.
What Happens Next
The Law Commission will now review all submissions, including ours, as part of its wider consultation process. Over the coming months, the Law Commission will publish its findings and recommendations for reform. We’ll continue to engage with this dialogue when we have the opportunity to do so, ensuring that the voices of Black and minoritised grassroots communities are heard as a part of this process.
*By ‘minoritised communities’, we mean groups of people that have been seen or defined as minorities in the context of the UK, whether or not they are in fact majority communities in a broader global context. The term ‘minoritised’ indicates a power dynamic that involves making those in the minority feel as though they are ‘other’: outside of the norm or mainstream and often somehow ‘less than’. This ‘minoritisation’ and resulting experience of structural inequalities and discrimination is often historical, structural and institutional – and does not necessarily relate to one
person’s or a handful of people’s bigotry or prejudice. The minoritised communities that we focused on for the purposes of our work are minoritised ethnic communities including Black and Brown people, disabled people, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.
**By ‘grassroots groups’ we mean organisations that draw their members and staff predominantly or entirely from the communities they aim to serve. These organisations are closely linked with their local communities and local concerns, are often formed or informed by activists in movements for social or environmental justice, and that are working largely on a not-for-profit basis