The Co-operative Party seeks to inject co-operative and mutual values and principles into political and public policy debates and government action. The Co-operative ideal is right in principle, but it also works in practise. We promote the best ideas, models and innovations from the co-operative movement.

By setting out a clear “Co-operative Agenda” for successive elections, and for community action, the Co-operative Party has helped to influence positive developments in policy and practise.

Our 2010 “Agenda” was the most comprehensive policy document ever produced by the Party. We didn’t rest on our laurels after the general election – instead, we embarked on a radical new approach to policy making – engaging individual members, branches and co-operative organisations in policy development for the first time. Submissions were sent in; draft policy documents were circulated, amendments and suggestions were welcomed from across the Party and the co-operative movement. These were added to the documents and presented to conference for discussion and endorsement.

The process produced twelve policy documents (which can be found here) and culminated in our Agenda for Britain document (which can be found here).

We had some really useful feedback on this process from members at last year’s Conference which has been fed into our planning for how the process will work in future.

As we plan our policy process for the next four years, the good news is that we start from this very solid foundation.

The challenge now is to identify issues on which we should prioritise future work – this is where you come in.

We now want to capture your ideas, areas of concern and priorities for the policies we should be developing and championing in the coming years.

It would be really helpful if you could take a few minutes to answer the some quick questions. You don’t need to be a policy expert or to have read the Party’s policy documents to let us have your views.

Click here to go to our survey website to fill in your answers

Members who are coming to Co-operative Party Annual Conference on 19 and 20 September in London will also have the opportunity to discuss future policy priorities at the ‘Vision 2020 – Taking the Co-operative Party Policy Process Forward’ session on Saturday morning (click here to register for Conference).

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us.