Local, Loved and Trusted…. with Legal Support? 7.00pm 03.07.13 Holyoake House

I'm honoured to be talking about recent and imminent legal developments and Co-ops at the Ian Pyper Memorial Lecture (kindly sponsored by DWF LLP for the UK Society for Co-operative Studies) at 7.00pm on 3rd July at Holyoake House, home of Co-operatives UK for Co-ops Fortnight. For free food in advance come at 6.30.pm......

Further information from Richard Bickle - richardbickle@cooptel.net

Co-op Registration and Bill Cash's Ancestors

To make the primary materials more accessible to fellow co-op law anaraks at this stage in the Parliamentary process, I have put a PDF of extracts from the Financial Services Bill 2012 & Explanatory Note on Mutual Society Registration online here.
I have not found time to analyse them and they are fairly straightforward. They empower HMT to transfer the registration function for industrial and provident societies, friendly societies and building societies from the Financial Services Authority (FSA) to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) (a renamed FSA with fewer powers) and/or the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) (a wing of the Bank of England dealing with banking regulation).
Subclause 47(3) allows complete flexibility for transfers to either or both and between them on an ongoing basis and subclause 47(4) allows the functions currently administered in Northern Ireland to be transferred to London.
I have not found the time to examine the proposed changes in any depth and the best place to look for that is probably the Draft Mutual Societies Order here .

In the House of Commons debate on the clause, an opposition amendment to encourage the collection of data on mutuals was lost.
However, the debate was well worthwhile. It was revealed that arch-Euro-sceptic Bill Cash, Tory MP for Stone, is a descendant of a founder of the Abbey National Building Society. We all remember what happened to that........
In fairness Mr Cash, who seems to believe that the main purpose of the Rochdale Pioneers in founding the world-wide co-operative movement was to help people to buy houses, pointed out that the Abbey National is now Santander. He expressed some concern about the possible implications of the link to Spanish banking system.

© Ian Snaith 2012 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Noderivs 2.0 England and Wales Licence. To view a copy of this licence visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA

Co-op Law Consolidation: Where is it now?

The project to consolidate the legislation for co-operatives and community benefit societies in the UK still seems to be at the stage of a brief being drafted by HM Treasury for the Law Commission. As of today I could find nothing on the English Law Commission website or the HM Treasury website.There was an estimate in the March report of Co-operatives UK's management to its board that once the Law Commissions are briefed it will take 9 months to achieve the drafting of the consolidated statute.  Then it has to be reviewed by the appropriate Parliamentary Committee and passed. Could be a  long job........

© Ian Snaith 2012 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Noderivs 2.0 England and Wales Licence. To view a copy of this licence visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA

New Regulators for Co-op and Community Benefit Societies

At the end of January 2012 the Government published detailed draft plans for the transfer of the role of registering co-op and community benefit societies after the new Financial Services Bill becomes law.

Currently the role belongs to the FSA but when the FSA's functions are transferred to two new regulators this function will belong mainly to the new Financial Conduct Authority. In essence that body will carry out the basic regulatory function while the new Prudential Regulation Authority will deal with issues specific to any societies that are authorised to operate in financial services - most obviously credit unions. However, there is a certain amount of overlap in the roles of the two bodies.

The detailed proposals are to be found in clauses 47 to 50 of the Financial Services Bill 2012 published on 30th January 2012 and in the Draft Mutual Societies Order published at the same time to aid parliamentary consideration of the Bill.

This represents a decision to effectively continue with the present arrangement rather than transferring the function of registering societies to another regulator dealing with similar issues such as the CIC Regulator.

This has the advantage that the co-operative and community society structure is less likely to become a variation of the company structure but the disadvantage that the function may remain, as it has been with the FSA, a rather marginalised and minor function of a large orgainsation mainly focused on other issues.

© Ian Snaith 2012 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Noderivs 2.0 England and Wales Licence. To view a copy of this licence visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA