About CASE

Established in 1982, CASE is a co-operative with more than 40 years experience in helping to establish co-ops, social enterprises and community businesses in the East Midlands.

We are committed to changing the way people do business, by promoting co-operative ways of working and encouraging employee and community ownership.

Our staff are our directors, and all have an equal say in how the organisation works and what we do. Our advisors are people with hands-on knowledge in the local co-operative and social enterprise sector – they run organisations themselves, and understand the challenges of balancing operational needs alongside working to grow and develop a business. 

Find out more about our advisor team and their specialisms. 

40 Years of Co-operation

CASE began life as LCCDA – the Leicester and County Co-operative Development Agency in 1982, at a time when most local authority areas in the UK had a CDA, set up to encourage co-operative enterprises. 

The turn of the millennium saw the introduction of new social enterprise models, including Community Interest Companies (CICs) and CASE expanded its remit to work beyond co-ops, across the new wider VCSE Sector. It also became an independent organisation, no longer tied to the local authority, and therefore survived and thrived at a time when many CDA’s ceased to exist. This means that CASE now works across the whole East Midlands, providing specialist expertise in co-operative business models that is otherwise hard to access in our region. 

CASE advisors work remotely from locations across the East Midlands, and are happy to travel across the region to meet organisations face to face, allowing us to gain a good first-hand understanding of your work and local context. 

Co-op News covered our 40th Birthday celebrations in 2022, and CASE commissioned a film in the same year to celebrate our achievements:

In 2020-2022, CASE instigated a Heritage Lottery Fund-supported project ‘Co-op Living History’, which sought to capture the experiences of those who have been involved with Leicestershire co-ops. Find out more about the project here.