Press release -

Wales Co-operative Centre sets the standard for quality

The Wales Co-operative Centre, Wales’ leading development organisation for social businesses has achieved the PQASSO Level 2 standard. The Centre, which has offices in Caerphilly, Swansea, Bangor and Carmarthen, gained the award after undertaking a wide reaching internal review process and improving its in-house quality processes and standards.

PQASSO is the leading quality standard developed for the third sector and by the sector. It is run by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

PQASSO covers all aspects of an organisation. Its standards include governance, communications, monitoring and service delivery. As it was designed for use within the third sector PQASSO is designed to include quality measures that are relevant to that sector and to the triple bottom line approaches that social businesses utilise. This approach suited the aims and values of the Wales Co-operative Centre which is a Community Benefit Society.

Derek Walker is Chief Executive of the Wales Co-operative Centre. He commented,

“Maintaining and improving the quality if what we do in the third sector is more important than ever. The Wales Co-operative Centre aims to deliver the highest quality services to its clients and we felt that the PQASSO approach offered a comprehensive quality system that would help us to continue to embed a culture of continuous improvement across the organisation.

“As a result of the process we needed to make some big and small improvements. These varied from the way we structured our meetings to the location of our offices to the size of our board.

“I am delighted that this month the Centre succeeded in being accredited at PQASSO level 2. The WCVA have just launched an initiative to promote PQASSO in Wales, which should see many more organisations take up the standard.

“We couldn’t have achieved this without the commitment and ‘buy-in’ from all the members, clients, staff and board members who contributed to the process”.


Topics

  • Economy, Finance

Categories

  • pqasso
  • ncvo
  • wcva
  • community benefit society
  • wales co-operative centre
  • social enterprise

Regions

  • Wales

Wales Co-operative Centre

The Wales Co-operative Centre was set up in 1982 and is Wales’ national body for co-operatives, mutuals, social enterprises and employee-owned businesses. It applies its co-operative values to strengthening communities and services as well as supporting these social businesses.

The Wales Co-operative Development and Training Centre Limited (trading as the Wales Co-operative Centre) is a registered society under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014, number 24287 R

www.walescooperative.org

Contacts

David Madge

Press contact Marketing, Press & Public Affairs Officer Press and Public Affairs. Marketing (primarily Succession and Consortia Project). 01792484005

Catherine Evans

Press contact Marketing Manager Overall responsibility for marketing and communications at the Wales Co-operative Centre 01443 743943

Mark Smith

Press contact Marketing Officer Social Media, Case Studies and Communities 2.0 029 2055 6163