This page is where members can find out what's going on with the cooperative and their shares. See also public information in the news section.
Westmill Solar Co-operative has almost 1,650 members who have bought shares in the society.
It is governed by its rules in a very democratic way - each member has one vote, irrespective of the size of their shareholding. For a full set of the rules, see here.
Minutes from the most recent board meetings are available here:
The initial shareholdings were acquired through a public share offer, which closed on 31 July 2012 (see reference copy of our share offer document here). This set out to raise £4m in equity, but was 50% oversubscribed, so allocations had to be scaled back, as described below. Members were allowed to invest between £250 and £20,000 for A-Shares under the public share offer.
A subsequent private placement raised a further £1.8m from what the law refers to as 'sophisticated investors', who could invest between £10,000 and £75,000. This placement issued B-Shares which are identical to the public offer shares in all respects, except that they are not withdrawables (as further described in Section 17 of the rules). Almost 60 members hold B shares (some in addition to A-Shares).
We have encouraged membership from the local area of the solar park. Consequently 15% of the members live within 7km. A further 70% were prioritised in the share allocation process because they live within 40km (or met one of the other criteria for priority 2 described below).
We also allowed people to subscribe on behalf of children, and almost 100 did so. A fine example of investment in sustainable technology for the next generation!
Our members might be interested in some headline figures about the make-up of their cooperative. Below are some statistics to provide a snapshot of the cooperative:
- 15 % of members live within 7km of the site
- 57 % are from within 40km or members of another cooperative
- 28 % do not belong to either of these groups: which arguably demonstrates community energy
projects’ ability to appeal to those not otherwise involved in this type of project
- There are 108 nominee shareholders:
- 9 are held on behalf of Companies or Trusts
- 99 are held on behalf of children or grandchildren
- Members arguably saw the offer as a good long term investment for the next generation
Our youngest nominee ‘member’ is only a few months old
The average A-share investment was £2,500
- The majority of A-share investments were for £1,000
Westmill Solar have been allowed to issue only 4 million A-Shares under our offer because of the FSA regulations under which it was made. We originally received applications for almost 6 million shares and therefore would have been obliged to return almost a 1/3 of the subscriptions received.
In order to reduce the amount of any scale-back and to increase the equity for WSC, eligible applicants, who were pre-qualified to participate in the subsequent placing of our newly approved class of B-shares, were given the option to transfer their applications. A number of investors agreed to do so, and thanks to these transfers the scaling back of the public placing is substantially less, returning just under £1.2m, rather than the original £2m.
The public offer included provisions to give priority to local and community applicants. Accordingly, the Board has set the following criteria for scaling back applications under the public offer.
All share allocations will be rounded down to the nearest multiple of 50. All shares will be issued at par value of £1.
For applicants in priority 1 (residents within 7km of the site): Applications up to and including £10,000 will not be scaled back. Above this level, applications will be scaled to 80% of the amount applied for, but not below £10,000.
For applicants in priority 2 (residents within 40km of the site and/or members of other Co-operatives and/or customers of Good Energy): Applications up to and including £2,500 will not be scaled back. Above this level, applications will be scaled to just below 75% of the amount applied for, but not below £2,500.
For other applicants: Applications up to and including £1,000 will not be scaled back. Above this level, applications will be scaled to 50% of the amount applied for, but not below £1,000.
This means that just over 500 of nearly 1,650 prospective members are subject to scale-back. The overall scale-back in each band is shown in column (A) below. This is lower than the percentages shown above owing to the number who aren’t scaled back because their application is below the threshold.
|
Priority band |
(A) |
Threshold (below which no scale-back) |
Scale-back applicable above threshold |
|
Priority 1 |
93.7% |
10,000 shares |
80% |
|
Priority 2 |
79.3% |
2,500 shares |
73.9% |
|
Others |
55.8% |
1,000 shares |
50% |