Matthew Brown
Cabinet Member for Social Justice, Inclusion and Policy, Preston City Council
Councillor Matthew Brown has helped pioneer Community Wealth Building in Preston and Lancashire using a number of levers to retain and democratise wealth in the local economy. The interest generated in “The Preston Model” has been acknowledged by The Labour Party and Cooperative Party nationally with Birmingham, Ealing and a number of EU cities beginning to embrace similar strategies.
A key feature has been to engage placed based public and quasi public “anchor institutions” to increase spend on goods and services in the local economy including plans to create new worker led cooperatives. Credit union expansion, community banking, localised pension fund investment, energy democracy and employee ownership also contribute to a long term strategy for system change at a local level.
In the current debate around a gradual move to a post capitalist economy following the failings of austerity and neo liberalism these are essential ideas to hear about.
My Sessions
Creating a positive policy framework
Great HallClaire McCarthy
John McDonnell MP
Dirk Holemans
Matthew Brown
Karin Christiansen
What can Governments, Local Authorities and Councils do to enable platform co-ops to flourish? Are you good at taking notes? Please help collaboratively document this session here* (*an instance of etherpad created with one-click using Sandstorm)