Manchester Co-operative Development Agency

Material relating to the Manchester Co-operative Development Agency (MANCODA)

MANCODA (Manchester Co-operative Development Agency) was Manchester's co-operative development agency. It worked to help people to form worker co-operatives and provide help to people in co-operatives. As well as worker co-operatives it also helped community co-operatives. The city of Manchester in 1982 was perhaps one of the first Councils to hold discussions and set up a Co-operative Development Agency. MANCODA began operating in 1983. In 1987/88 there was a large scale reduction by Central Government in the scope of the grants that the City Council could make to co-operatives, however the City tried to maintain the maximum level of assistance to co-operatives that it could legally give. We are unable to ascertain from records as to when MANCODA officially ceased to function.

The collection is open to any accredited reader, subject to the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018.

Some files in this collection are subject to Data Protection legislation as they contain sensitive information and material under 30 years old is closed to access. It is advised that you contact the Archivist before visiting.

In October 2017, the National Co-operative Archive published a call-out for historic materials within the wider worker co-op community for Working Together , an Heritage Lottery Funded project seeking to record and preserve the heritage of the worker co-operative moment. This material was deposited in response to this call out.