We are converting to a Community Benefit Society. Do you want to join us on the journey?

October Books began as a workers co-operative society in 1981, run by the workers for the workers. In 2017 we converted to a members co-operative and invited you, our community, to get involved in the decisions about the next steps for the business.  Your support at this time was so important as we embarked on a new chapter in our story, with the purchase and renovation of our own premises. In order to purchase our new premises you raised over £330,000 for us via loanstock and donations. 

Investors who bought loanstock were invited to invest for 1, 5 or 10 years. Many of our 1 year investors have rolled over their investment to 5 years. This means that in 2023 we have £277K of loanstock to repay. In our business plan we proposed that we would raise these funds by converting to a Community Benefit Society and issuing community shares.

We have provided information to our members about Community Benefit Societies (CBS) and you can watch a video of Nathan Brown describing this business model here. There is also lots on information online and you can find out more here from Co-ops UK if you want a deeper dive. A question that is often asked is whether we will still hold to co-operative principles when we convert to a CBS. To reassure you we will maintain our co-operative principles as a Community Benefit Society. We will also develop some more FAQs to share with you over time.

So, we now need to start thinking about how we do this and we have produced a roadmap detailing the important milestones. These milestones are:

1. April 2021 Send out newsletters inviting people to join a Working Group

2. June 2021 Promote and hold first meeting of CBS Working Group

3. January 2022 Have governance documentation for CBS in place

4. March 2022 Complete application for conversion to a CBS

5. June to October 2022 Community share issue documentation and promotion

6. Nov to Dec 2022 Launch community share offer

We would like to invite you to join us on this journey and help us to make this process engaging and inspiring to our community and to other local businesses. We are holding our first meeting of the Working Group on June 22nd at 7pm and we would like to invite you to join us. Please book your ticket here via Eventbrite.

We are open:

Monday - Saturday
10am - 4pm

We are back open six days a week, with the whole store open for browsing. We will still of course be taking customer orders and you will still be able to buy food and cleaning products online through our online store. 

We are able to be open 6 days a week again becuse of your consideration and care whilst in the shop. Keep doing what you’re doing and leave that extra space, sanitise those hands and pull on that mask. We know you’re smiling underneath it :) 

You will see we have a QR code at the door, if you have the NHS COVID-19 app downloaded to your smart phone please scan this as you enter the shop.