It was a privilege to present in Whitstable, Kent, recently to the People’s Commission on Water, whose report is released today.

It relates to a topic that I have thought about for over twenty years, since commissioning a report on non-profit and mutual models in rail and water when I led the New Economics Foundation.

My brief was to set out non-profit and mutual models for water utilities. This is pretty much ruled out by the official review of the water sector by Sir John Cunliffe which argued recently that while companies are expected to have independent directors, there are “limits to how far this is compatible with representation of multiple stakeholders”.

In short, if investor ownership is the solution, then of course non-profit models are second best. But if the goal is a fair, sustainable and affordable water system, then the opposite is true.

We could start with Adam Smith, often associated with market forces, who famously stated that we expect our dinner “not from the benevolence of the butcher or the baker…but from their regard to their own interest”.

However, Adam Smith also recognized that some services are not suited for the private interests of a market. He commended the Turnpike Trusts, which, though private, operated effectively as non-profits, raising funds through bonds and having their toll prices set by Parliament. He also viewed “good roads, canals and navigable rivers” as crucial for breaking up monopolies.

Privatisation is a market solution and it only makes sense where there is a market. When there is only one choice and one provider in a region, it is a monopoly. Consumer choice can drive performance where you have contestable markets. Citizen voice has to be the driver where you are in a monopoly context. 

Managing water systems involves many stakeholders but privatisation has destroyed trust, making pollution, such as discharging sewage into rivers, the norm. If the system encouraged it, there are innovative ways to bring people together, such as accelerating wildlife friendly wetlands that can also act as barriers to coastal flooding as sea levels rise.

A mutual model offers several key advantages:

• Reinvestment of surpluses: Profits are reinvested back into the system, improving infrastructure rather than being distributed to shareholders.
• Improved accountability: There’s a greater focus on customers and service, leading to enhanced accountability.
• Long-term strategic planning: Mutuals can stabilize bills over time through strategic long-term planning.
• Stronger environmental stewardship: A mutual model can foster a deeper commitment to environmental protection.
• Improved public trust: By putting the public interest at its core, mutual models can rebuild much-needed trust in water services.

Paris brought its water services back under public control around fifteen years ago with the creation of Eau de Paris. This move was not just a change in management but a fundamental restructuring of governance, placing public participation and transparency at the core of the new water company’s ethos.

Denmark provides a more longstanding real-world example. There, water services are delivered through a mix of state and cooperative water companies. While larger urban areas tend to have municipal utilities, rural water services are frequently run as mutuals. Remarkably, over 40% of the Danish population receives its water from approximately 2,500 water cooperatives. This demonstrates a successful, widespread alternative to the heavily privatized model seen elsewhere.

Of course, there are challenges. Mutuality cannot be imposed from above and it will take time to shift the water system to a more trusted equilibrium. Glas Cymru works on a non-profit basis but lacks enough of an active and open membership that can provide voice and challenge within the governance of the utility. And of course there is a need to clean up a confused system of regulation.

Some combination of state ownership and stakeholder participation is probably the place to start and this is recognised in the initial proposals of the People’s Commission on Water.

Thames Water would then be the first to shift into a new way of working, a tough assignment for a new non-profit model but one that given time would deliver far better results than a failed, propped up privatisation.

The Government has plenty of warm words for co-operatives, but a lot less so far in the way of practical action. Does it have the courage to mark a shift in thinking for the water sector as profound as the chapter of privatisation a generation ago?

By embracing mutual models, we can surface new ideas, get things done effectively, and bring people together around a shared vital resource. The People’s Commission on Water’s report is a crucial step in charting this new course for water in the UK.

I am running my first half marathon at the young age of 61 in memory of my precious late mum, Susan Mayo. 

I am looking to raise funds for the amazing work of the Eve Appeal, a small charity with the goal of tackling gynaelogical cancers for women. The Eve Appeal is working to make it a reality that all gynae cancers are prevented or detected at an early stage.

When my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she had the courage to handle her illness while still showing care for others. When the medical advice was clear, that she was running out of time even before treatment had begun, she quickly came to terms with her own coming death. She was generous and she was courageous and she is still an inspiration to me.

This is the Big Half in September 2025 in London. Running the same race too is my niece, Megan. She will be faster by far, but to complete my first half marathon successfully and to do so while raising vital funds for the wonderful Eve Appeal, where my friend Sally (Bailey, former Chair of Pilotlight) is a trustee… that is my goal.

Thank you for any support you can give me.

Looking back, one of the best ways in which I have learned and developed is through workplace volunteering.

With support from an inspiring Chair at Co-operatives UK, the farmer co-op pioneer David Button, I took on a six year role as Chair of the democracy charity Involve. Co-ops here at the time were big on traditional, representative structures of democratic decision-making but slower on the uptake of more participatory approaches.

I am still grateful for the immense learning I gained from working with Simon Burall, the charity Chief Executive, fellow trustees and the talented colleagues Simon nurtured at Involve.

Simon passed away last year, after a struggle with MS and tumours that he shared openly through an inspiring blog everephemeral. On Saturday, thanks to his family, around two hundred people (please fact check, I wasn’t counting!) who knew him gathered in Lewes Town Hall to mark his contribution to friends, family and society.

In my short contribution to this, I reflected on what I had learned from him.

Leadership tends to be a noisy affair. But Simon, as CEO of Involve, taught me about quiet leadership.

Involve was rooted in three Ps. First, participation, recognising that if knowledge is dispersed, then wisdom comes from its gathering.

Second, power, recognising that if gathering is to succeed, patterns of power, whether power over – domination, exclusion – or power to – agency, confidence – need to be transformed.

And the third P was the most practical, potentially the most far-reaching – once touched by this, time with others was never the same. Post-it notes. If Involve was funded on commission for Post-it note sales, it would have been an easier business model.

Simon led Involve both as CEO and as a hands-on practitioner – a natural facilitator – in a team of practitioners.

Even people coming in new, whether for admin or projects, were talented would-be facilitators and democracy advocates. I’d say ‘can’t we recruit an administrator who simply wants to be an administrator?’ But no, it turned out that brilliant, bright advocates for democratic reform could also be brilliant, bright administrators.

Simon’s style of being quiet as a leader and as a facilitator was one of creating space for others to speak, his interventions being ones of invitation and ones of learning and reflection. 

In a world that is always talking, he was a listener, an observer. He had composure, he had the curiosity in others that underpins empathy, relationships, trust.

Holding the quiet, holding the silence… is a skill which Simon had, as with all great facilitators. Others of us rush in, fill the silence and in doing so quiet the voices of others who might speak.

I remember him holding the quiet in the immense hall of the Queen Elizabeth Centre in Westminster, on the morning of the first NHS Citizen Assembly. The programme designed to hold those in power to account was co-designed by Simon and run in partnership with others, as so, so often.

Among the achievements I saw that Simon led on, as a reflective designer, practitioner and champion to put people at the heart of decision-making, included:

– Public engagement on science and technology, from CRISPR and GM Food to nanotechnology and genomics

– Deliberative models for decision-making, including championing large-scale Citizens Assemblies

– Public participation on health and social care and climate change

– Open government, an initiative pioneered initially by Involve and now spread around the world

He was an internationalist, recognised across borders, but doing so much to put the UK at the forefront of experimental models for participation.

But not all experiments work. With NHS Citizen, as with so many participation projects, it turned out that those in power tend to prefer not being held to account.

As Simon said wryly to me “I help people who think they have got to take quick decisions, that if they took the time and talked to others, they’d make a better decision.”

One word for this is deliberative. The great challenge for participatory practice is how and whether it can become normalised, everyday practice, the grass and the weeds of life rather than a walled garden, cultivated, contained and set far from where power resides. 

The visions for this are diverse, from citizen science, community arts, co-production, appropriate technology, community development, participatory design, worker co-ops… democracy in society. 

All of these have value and it was democracy that Simon focused on as the underlying system that needed to change, that a new settlement was needed, as fundamental as the arrival of representative democracy.

He used that concept of deliberation to write his own great sketch of a participatory democracy, in Room for a View, the idea that what we need is more open, more inclusive, more connected interaction between the empowered space of decision makers and the diverse lived experience and aspirations of people.

At its core, Simon said, “what we need is a democracy is where significantly more perspective and voices are visible in the debates, interacting with each other and changing in the light of the views of others and critically informing decisions, policy and democratic debate.”

As John Dryzek, Professor, said in support of Simon’s arguments: “Any attempts at democratic reform that ignore the multiplicity of sites of democratic activity and – crucially – their interconnectedness are likely to misfire.”

As with so many charities, the vision – in this case, a richer, more participatory democracy – is still beyond our reach, even if Involve and its partners have done so much to promote new models of participation.

But balancing vision with personal practice, the way that I listen and engage with others and understanding the value of silence, of quiet as enabling spaces has been transformative for me personally. I can’t think of a better way to have learned this.

Thank you, Simon.

How time flies but ideas prevail.

Yesterday was eighty eight years to the day after the battle of Cable Street, in which the communities of the East End came together to block the passage of Oswald Moseley’s black shirted fascists.

I found myself in Southwark Playhouse to watch Cable Street the musical…

Written by Tim Gilvin and Alex Kanefsky, the show is beautifully constructed around the different voices and communities of the East End and the narrative gives life and light to the stories, dreams and challenges that led people to the barricades… and to the black shirts.

The Director Adam Lenson contributed to a talk before the show, with historians and the writers, and explained why a musical could fit the drama of the conflict, adapting the words of David Hockney to suggest that theatre was not there to paint events but to paint the experience of those events. Music, beautifully written, played and sung, helps to do that and yes, as an experience, it worked its magic for me.

And the choreography of actors taking on characters, changing costumes, wheeling through the close space of an intimate theatre created in turn a sense of a bustling, struggling complex of family and community in the narrow long of Cable Street.

It is a road I love as it now has a cycle super highway on it that takes me from the top of the Isle of Dogs through towards the city on my way to work. Occasionally I will stop along the way and admire the mural to the battle of Cable Street in St George’s’s Gardens

Eighty eight years on… The pain of hardship, the temptation to blame others, the challenges of intersectional exclusion, the scope for solidarity remains. Whether these are orchestrated into fascist sympathies, or whether they call us to come together with others in our own streets, to say no remains to be seen.

I guess that it is a call from down history, that when oppression and intolerance arrives, we have the chance in turn to shape and become part of what is to follow.

The part that declares that they shall not pass.

Leadership tends to be a noisy affair, but one charity leader taught me about quiet leadership… Simon Burall.

Involve is a charity promoting democratic participation, founded by Rich Wilson and Perry Walker Sir Geoff Mulgan among others and for six years from 2013, I had the joy of being Chair of Trustees.

Simon was CEO and led as a hands-on practitioner – a natural facilitator – in a team of practitioners (even people coming in new, whether for admin or projects, were all talented would-be facilitators and democracy advocates). Simon’s style of being quiet was one of creating space for others to speak, his interventions being ones of invitation and ones of learning and reflection.

Simon’s talent was to bridge the manic and typically minuscule world of participatory practice with advocacy and innovation for democratic reform across society. He was an internationalist, recognised across borders, but doing so much to put the UK at the forefront of experimental models for participation.

For me, coming from a co-op sector which, particularly at scale, has been quite traditional – conservative even – in its focus on representative democracy, I was learning from Simon about new, more participatory models of democratic voice.

Among the achievements that Simon led on, in the time that I was around, to put people at the heart of decision-making, included:

– Open government, an initiative pioneered initially by Involve and now spread around the world
– Public engagement on science and technology
– Deliberative models for decision-making, including championing large-scale Citizens Assemblies
– Public participation on health and social care and climate change.

Like many small charities, we suffered from ups and downs of financial support, in particular with the madness of sudden death contracts and empty warm words from public commissioners of health and science in central Government. When we triggered some red flag indicators we had agreed as trustees, Simon’s quiet leadership was one of creating space again, alongside the wonderful Dr Amy Pollard and Clive Mitchell this time for a new team of leaders in the charity, such as Tim Hughes Sarah Allan

When crisis hits any organisation, openness is the first casualty as leaders look to control. Involve under Simon did the opposite and it was one of the most profound learning experiences of my time working in the social sector.

When I stepped down as Chair, I wrote on my learning from the work with Simon and Involve, concluding that “if you think democracy is on the run, think again. This is an extraordinary age of voice and participation and we are still only in the foothills of how to organise society and economy on democratic principles.”

Simon, you are as quiet as the grave now. I shed tears now, as I write; tears for your passing and… am grateful too for you coming into my life and our world.

One of the great radical thinkers over my lifetime has died. I have been asked by the Guardian to write about the life of James Robertson, one of the key figures behind the formation of the New Economics Foundation.

The obituary I wrote is published here

It has been a joyful process and a privilege to revisit his life and works, turning out my bookshelves to re-read his writing, including one, Benefits and Taxes, commissioned by me thirty years before.

In 1974, James wrote an article for the Times, asking if we could have a non-profit economy and four years later, for the Guardian, with the journalist Harford Thomas, he created an Alternatives Manifesto as a challenge to the thinking of all the political parties on economic, social and environmental policy.

There are many great insights and ideas that remain fresh. Here is one on ‘efficiency’, a topic which still retains a one-eyed grip on economic thinking today:

Efficiency is measured as a ratio between significant inputs and significant outputs; the greater the output in relation to the input, the greater the efficiency. So its meaning depends on what are seen as the most significant inputs and outputs what inputs are most important to reduce, and what outputs are most important to increase?

In farming and every other sphere it has been assumed efficient to reduce labour. Supposedly efficient farms have produced high profits (output) compared with the number of workers employed (input). Ratios between the calorific value of the food produced and the materials used to produce it, or between the amount of food produced and the area of land farmed, have not been seen as significant. Nor have the externalised costs of water, air and land pollution, soil erosion, impacts on human health, destruction of wildlife and wildlife habitats, and rural unemployment.

The meaning of economic efficiency needs rethinking in all sectors of economic activity.

My thanks in appreciation, and condolences in sadness to Alison Robertson, James’ wife, and his friend Francis Miller, for their encouragement and input to what I have written on his life and work.

As a short ceasefire takes hold in Gaza and hostages are released, I feel sorrow for all those who have worked for peace over time and will feel so adrift as war and violence sets in.

In this context I want to add my own recognition of Vivian Silver, from Kibbutz Beeri, a great peace activist and co-founder of the Women Wage Peace movement in Israel.

She was murdered in the course of Black Saturday on October 7.

Vivian dedicated her life to social action, to the advancement of women, and to pursuing peace. She arrived in Israel from Canada in 1974 and she did everything possible to promote co-operative values, peace and Arab-Jewish partnership.

In 1998, she was among the founders of the co-operative aid partnership Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Economic Development (AJEEC-NISPED). She worked as co-CEO of the organization and even when retired was an active board member until her last day.

I am hearing her news from the great Mully Dor, Chair of the Executive Board of AJEEC-NISPED. He says that:

my friend Vivian believed with her whole heart in the idea of promoting peace. Since we founded AJEEC-NISPED, together with Dr. Yehuda Paz, you could always see the human qualities in her. She could form deep friendships and left a mark on everyone she met, from her friends in the kibbutz COOP to Palestinians and Bedouins.

Within AJEEC-NISPED, Vivian flourished with Amal Elsana, whom she brought on as co-CEO to show that we not only speak about a shared society but achieve that dream together at every level of our organization.

She had a rare sense of humour, resilience, and bravery to persist in her vision. She knew how to bring people together towards the vision that she lived, and she will be greatly missed.

At her funeral, over a thousand people came.

At this, her son Zeigen spoke with heart to say “You were a woman… of big ideas. Now, after your death, we will make a bigger effort to bring the tomorrow you always dreamed about.”

In war and death, dreams end. Only in peace and in life can they flourish.

We launch our Pilotlight report A Call for Climate Volunteers this morning.

My thanks to those who have fed in to my work on this over time, including, with some tears here, the late John Davis, who passed away this Summer aged 99 (author of Greening Business, friend of Fritz Schumacher, co-founder of New Economics Foundation – a life well lived)

It has been a long time in the preparation, involving research with 298 charities and social enterprises active on the climate emergency.

Some key numbers are:

• around 16,000 charities and social enterprises are working on climate and sustainability in the UK
• 63% are actively looking for support from volunteers with professional expertise
• We estimate that 100,000 skilled climate volunteers are needed to fulfil the sector’s potential to spur, spread and scale positive action for sustainability
• For employers, giving staff an opportunity to do something is one way to recognise the rise of eco-anxiety that now affects one in six employees (and one in three for 18-34 year olds).

The report is on Call for Climate Volunteers and there is a technical report which we have shared with the charities that responded to our survey, which you can find on https://www.pilotlight.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-09/The_organisational_needs_of_charities_and_social_enterprises_in_the_UK_working_on_climate_and_sustainability_Oct_23.pdf

The core idea is a bold one – that we can speed up climate action by filling a gap that exists for capacity building for environmental charities and social enterprises. The faster and wider we can do this, the more dramatic impact we can have.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

The Big Help Out is the volunteering effort tied to the royal coronation. It is designed to do good, so what’s not to like?

Despite the participation of a range of traditional volunteering charities and being backed by public figures such as Tim Peake and Jack Monroe, the initiative has attracted some scrutiny.

Rob Jackson, consultant on volunteering and co-author of The Complete Volunteer Management Handbook, set these down early as a series of question marks.

It is a curious time to be concerned about the state of volunteering perhaps, given that we saw record levels of voluntary action just in the most recent period over the pandemic. Research from the Royal Voluntary Service at the time suggested that over 12 million people volunteered during the pandemic, with 4.6 million of these doing so for the first time. Over 3,000 mutual aid groups were created with the participation of an estimated 3 million people.

Much of this however was informal volunteering, rather than the routines of structured formal volunteering and the level of formal volunteering (albeit with many health warnings about data lags) declined both over the pandemic and it appears since, given pressures on people’s time. In a blog for Pilotlight, I asked just under a year ago: are we past the peak of volunteering?

I see value in initiatives like the Big Help Out, but I also sense some risk in putting effort into one off initiatives rather than what would be of real value, which is a long-term, patient programme of social marketing to promote the habits and practice of volunteering.

My own involvement with this was to work with distinguished colleagues such as Professor Jeff French to help set up the National Social Marketing Centre for the NHS in the early 2000s. Through that, we were able to build a powerful body of evidence on potential for effective social marketing to make a positive difference to people’s behaviours over time. This is not just the famous ‘nudge’ but the application of full marketing toolkit, including segmentation, insight, design and where appropriate, public communication.

Social marketing in the UK has contributed since to efforts to reduce levels of smoking in the UK. There have been a number of social marketing campaigns aimed at reducing smoking, such as the “Quit for Them” campaign and the “Stoptober” campaign. These campaigns have used a variety of methods to encourage people to quit smoking, such as providing information about the health risks of smoking, offering support and resources to help people quit, and creating a social environment that is supportive of quitting.

As a result of these campaigns, alongside of course other tobacco control measures, the number of smokers in the UK has declined significantly in recent years. In 2000, 28% of adults in the UK smoked. By 2020, this figure had fallen to 13.7%. This decline is largely due to tobacco control measures aligned to effective social marketing campaigns.

Social marketing has been used widely for other public goods with proven results, from recycling, sport and activity through to healthy eating.

Two findings that I always find encouraging when it comes to volunteering are that:

1. the most common reason people volunteer is because someone asked them and
2. the longer that people volunteer the more they trust other people.

In short, volunteering is a wonderful tool, rooted in relationships and tailormade to nurture and fulfil positive values. I think of our own work at Pilotlight helping employers to facilitate skills-based staff volunteering as a form of ‘empathy accelerator’.

You don’t have to be a committed royalist to applaud the intention of King Charles to recognise and encourage volunteering. What we need though is a well resourced, well prepared programme to encourage volunteering over his reign and not just around his coronation.

Social marketing shows us how.

Making DEI fun might sound at odds with the stark facts of disadvantage. But laughter can lighten the mood and open us up to new ways of seeing the world.

If it helps us to learn and use that learning for good, then fun is a perfect fit…

Our most recent staff session at Pilotlight was to complete a volunteering activity (production of tactile books) with a Partner Charity, ClearVision Project.

ClearVision Project’s Director, Alex Britton guided us in creating four to five tactile books that can be used by young people in reading groups at Linden Lodge, the school in which the charity is based.

Tactile books are used by young children with little or no sight, many of whom have additional physical or learning difficulties. Tactile books are an excellent introduction to the fun of reading, as well as being an invaluable means of conveying ideas, concepts and vocabulary. 

Sewing is not one of my stronger skills, but I knew enough to play my part and to help out colleagues with even fewer craft skills. We worked in teams and each team produced a book. Moments of silence were interspersed with moments of conversation and reflection, as if we were on a ramble or perhaps a pilgrimage together. Each team in turn could be heard in laughter.

We ended up with all the tactile books that we had hoped to pull together.

You can see more on our work and approach to diversity, including actions, plans and targets, plus an update on winning a Silver Award from Inclusive Employers here.

Fun? It can be a good tool for social change.