Last April Dave Hollings of Co-operative and Mutual Solutions Limited asked me two questions. He’s kindly given me permission to shares the Q & A’s on here.
Both questions are about co-operative societies. Apparently they were raised by a co-operative consortium planning to operate across national boundaries. There’s currently lots of interest in that model in the worker co-op sector. For example, both Altgen and uniteddiversity are working on developing the model. For question 1 see
Question 1 was answered in my last post. Here’s question 2:
2. Whilst the Act says clearly there can be corporate members, can there be corporate directors as in Companies?
Yes:
A corporate body can be a member of a society – s32 CCBSA 2014.
A “person” can be a committee member – s 30(3) CCBSA 2014.
In any Act “unless the contrary intention appears”, the word “‘Person” includes a body of persons corporate or unincorporate” – s5 & sched 1 Interpretation Act 1978. Therefore the answer seems to be “yes”.
Ian Snaith 2015