A POSTAL worker, Charles Garland, set up a Benenden Healthcare Society in its earliest form in 1905, during an epidemic of tuberculosis.

Charles started a mutual whereby the workers all paid a weekly amount to cover the cost of healthcare for whichever of them fell ill.

Today the society, which is headquartered at Holgate Park Drive, York, employs 160 people and still operates on the same principles as a non-profit mutual organisation.

While it provides healthcare services mainly to public sector workers and their families, Benenden has just changed its eligibility criteria to include employees of like-minded co-operatives and building societies, as part of plans to double its income in the next five years.

Another strand of this growth is possibilities that lie ahead for mutuals in the reform of the healthcare system. Chief executive Ken Hesketh met ministers in Westminster last month for positive talks on how mutuals could work with the public sector.

Neil Barnes, new media and community relations executive at Benenden, said: “Benenden Healthcare is proactively seeking to become as thought leader in the UK healthcare sphere.”

Benenden is going for Large Business Of The Year in The Press Business Awards 2010.