Early history and the Shaw era The Leek & Moorlands Permanent Benefit Building Society was founded in the small Staffordshire town of
Leek in 1856. There were already two terminating societies in the town, one of which was the Leek Benefit Building Society. The Leek Benefit’s solicitors saw the opportunity for a permanent organization and formed the Leek & Moorlands. The solicitor’s managing clerk, Thomas Shaw, was installed as Secretary, later managing director, and he ran the society until his death in 1913. Under Shaw, the society slowly expanded into the neighbouring areas of
Derbyshire and
the Potteries in the 1860s and 70s. One of the early features of the Society was that it was free to lend on commercial and agricultural property. In 1879 the society registered under the
Building Societies Act 1874, taking the opportunity to shorten its name to the Leek & Moorlands. By this time the society had around 1,750 members; this was to increase to 4,600 (now shareholders) by the end of Thomas Shaw’s long tenure. After his death, Thomas’s son Arthur took over the running of the society until his death in 1929, by which time shareholder numbers were approaching 15,000. The Shaw family had controlled the society for 73 years.
1930s and Hubert Newton Four years after the death of Arthur Shaw, the directors decided to look outside the Society for fresh leadership. In 1933, the 29-year-old [Sir] Hubert Newton was recruited as Secretary; he became a director in 1938 and under various titles, ran the society until he retired as Chairman in 1985, a span of 52 years. Like Sir Harold Bellman of the
Abbey National and Sir Enoch Hill of the
Halifax Building Society, Newton was one of the commanding figures in the building society industry. Described in the official history as “a maverick”, he had only been at the Leek for three years when he challenged the
Building Societies Association over proposed rule changes and led a breakaway union, the National Federation of Building Societies (to merge back in 1940. Newton’s involvement with the association (he was later chairman of the BSA) gave him a range of contacts which facilitated the Leek's post-war acquisitions. However, with the exception of one small acquisition in 1938, expansion in the 1930s was still organic. Redden’s history recorded that in 1935 less than 2,000 out of 30,000 members were local and branches had been opened as far afield as Manchester, Liverpool and Bristol.
Bristol & West The last acquisition was the deposit base and branch network of former building society
Bristol & West (bringing with it approximately 700,000 customers) from
Bank of Ireland in May 2005. This was the first major re-mutualisation in the United Kingdom (following the earlier
demutualisation trend) and brought membership of the enlarged society to just under three million. Bank of Ireland retained ownership of the Bristol & West brand and all other parts of the business.
Co-operative Group On 21 January 2009, Co-operative Financial Services (later The Co-operative Banking Group) and Britannia Building Society proposed a merger, first mooted in October 2008. On 29 April 2009, Britannia members voted overwhelmingly to become part of Co-operative Financial Services, the first such merger between different types of mutual under the
Butterfill Act. CFS, which incorporated the Co-operative Bank and
Co-operative Insurance Society, was itself a subsidiary of the
Co-operative Group. On 1 August 2009, Britannia Building Society was legally dissolved and Neville Richardson, its last chief executive, became chief executive of the enlarged CFS. Coincidentally, the largest remaining building society,
Nationwide, a competitor with Britannia, was itself formed in 1884 as the
Co-operative Permanent Building Society to provide services to members of the co-operative movement. In 2023, The Co-operative Bank began moving Britannia customers over to The Co-operative Bank platform, creating new accounts for them and closing their old accounts. This enabled the bank to turn off the Britannia legacy systems. At the same time, The Co-operative Bank stopped offering new Britannia accounts. By 2024, all Britannia accounts had been closed and customers moved to new Co-operative Bank accounts – thereby ending the Britannia brand after 49 years. ==Subsidiaries==