Westminster austerity has hit public services but co-operatives are helping support Welsh communities

This is one of a series of articles to mark Shared Economy, Shared Power, the Co-operative Party annual conference which runs from Friday 9 September to Sunday 11 September in Cardiff.

This year’s Co-operative Party conference – which returns Cardiff for the first time in several years – is an opportunity to highlight the work we are doing as a Labour Government across Wales to support co-ops and mutuals as well as drawing on the energy and ideas of the wider co-operative movement.

Wales can be considered the birthplace of the co-operative movement – Robert Owen was born in Newtown in 1771. Nearly 250 years later, Wales continues to embed co-operative values and principles in the planning and development of public services.

Our landmark Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act – which came into effect in April and is transforming the way social services are designed and delivered to put the needs of individuals first and centre – legislates for the creation of co-operative and mutual models in social care.

In education, the legislative framework for the composition of school governing bodies in Wales has been reviewed with a view to making them more flexible to allow governing bodies to be founded on co-operative principles.

And in 11 local authorities across Wales, tenants have voted for community mutual or social enterprise solutions for the management of their social housing.

We have created three pilot co-operative housing projects – one of which is in my own constituency of Cardiff West, which I had the privilege of visiting recently. These have the potential to deliver around 90 homes for rent and part-ownership in urban and rural parts of Wales.

These schemes are developing in partnership with housing associations and local authorities with funding support from the Welsh Government. They are supported by the Wales Co-operative Centre, Confederation of Co-operative Housing and other housing and co-operative experts.

Beyond these three pilot schemes there are also a number of emerging schemes that are interested in delivering co-operative housing. Market research shows there is a demand for, and interest in, co-operative housing in Wales.

Welsh Labour’s preference is for public services to be publicly funded and publicly provided but, in this time of austerity driven by cuts to the public purse by the UK Government, where that is not possible and alternatives need to be found, co-operatives are our preferred way forward.

We are therefore exploring the ways co-operatives, mutual and shared ownership models can be used to deliver modern public services, building on a review by the Wales Co-operative Centre last year.

It was clear there is already significant use of co-operatives in public service delivery in Wales but there is scope to make these developments stronger and more sustainable and, in doing so, to protect the interests of the communities which use these services and the workforce which delivers them.

We are continuing to face cuts to our budgets from the UK Government and there is uncertainty about the future as a result of the outcome of the EU referendum. As the Welsh Co-operative and Mutuals Commission has so eloquently said, the mutual model has the potential to provide better and more flexible citizen-centred services with greater efficiency, and especially at a time of austerity.

Mark Drakeford is cabinet secretary for finance and local government in the Welsh Government.