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Stephen Timms MPSocial Enterprise Business Support Strategy for London |
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I'm delighted to be here and very pleased to be Minister for Social Enterprise. And it is great to see so many different organisations contributing in a co-ordinated way to supporting social enterprises. National Context – Government Strategy A number of people here were present when Patricia Hewitt and I launched the Government's strategy for social enterprise at the Oxo tower in July. The reason the DTI is so committed to social enterprise is that social enterprise can play an important role in achieving our economic goals. Last month I travelled across the country on a five day tour of social enterprises – 25 different enterprises across England and Wales from Cornwall and the Rhondda Valley to Newcastle and Hull, turning over between them £100 million and employing 2000 people. I enjoyed the tour immensely and it was an object lesson for me in the potential of this sector. It is taken as read of course that acquiring wealth is a very effective motivator of men and women – the most striking impression from my tour is that building human capital through social enterprise is a very effective motivator too and I was very impressed by their enthusiasm etc. That applies to large projects, like the stunning Eden Project in Cornwall, where Tim Smit's vision of Eden has produced 1,700 jobs in the South West, given Cornwall the third most popular paid attraction in the country after just 18 months and started to transform the local economy. I asked Tim Smit what the aim of the Eden Project was and he said it was to change the world. And it also applies to smaller businesses, such as a company called Vision 21 in Wales, which I visited who recently took over a bottling and packaging facility from a little company in the private sector and employ people with learning difficulties to provide a commercial service to the private sector. I went to Aberfan in south Wales, an area particularly badly hit by the decline of traditional industries. Jeff Edwards who runs the project I visited came from the area but worked for many years very successfully in London, and returning home could see the scale of the problems facing young people in finding work there weren't any jobs in Aberfan. He came up with the idea of providing cars for unemployed young people so that they could drive to where the jobs are – in the M4 corridor 40 or 50 miles away. So his project buys mainly old Fiestas, £2000 a time apparently, employs and trains formerly unemployed young people to refurbish and maintain the cars, charges the customers £15 a week for the use of them and they can use them for the first three months of their employment – and at the end of that time they have to return the car to the project because they will then be able to obtain a bank loan and buy a car for themselves. In the eight year period the project has been running, unemployment has fallen from the upper 20s per cent to about seven per cent today – now of course there have been other things going on but it is a fact – and that project is a big part of the reason. That is the power of social enterprise – harnessing the skills and the energy of the entrepreneurial private sector at its best to address the social challenges, which face us at their most demanding. The strategy that we published in July aims at three key outcomes to boost social enterprise:
I want to say a little briefly about each. Create an Enabling Environment We want an environment in which social enterprises can flourish. That means working across Government to ensure that the development and growth of social enterprise is not held back by inappropriate regulations or by exclusion from initiatives from which social enterprise could benefit. Access to public procurement is important. Social enterprises are winning Government contracts as I saw in my tour to deliver services and are delivering them successfully across the country. But there is potential for more public services to be delivered by social enterprises. We are working with the Office of Government Commerce, the Local Government Association and others to help realise that potential. We want a better understanding of social enterprises amongst public sector procurers, and we also want greater expertise on procurement among social enterprises and so we'll be developing a procurement toolkit for social enterprises and their advisors, to help them win public sector business. We are planning an event next spring, to bring together government departments and local authorities with social enterprises, to promote the role of social enterprises in delivering local services. The Government Strategy Unit, in its recent review of Charities and the Not-for-Profit sector proposed, as many of you will know, a new legal form, the Community Interest Company, which a number of people on my tour confirmed will be particularly attractive for social enterprises. The key features would be a lock on the assets, a check at the point of registration that the objects of the organisation were in the public interest, and increased requirements for transparent operation and the Strategy Unit is consulting on that review is under way, and at the DTI we are considering the company law implications at the moment. Establish the Value of Social Enterprise We want secondly to help establish the value of social enterprise. We need better data to persuade people in Government, investors and others of the value of the sector. We also need better data to help us assess how the strategy is getting on. We are developing guidance on mapping social enterprise, for our use and we hope for others to use too. Once that has been produced, we will commission research to establish national baseline data about the social enterprise sector, including how big it is, its contribution to the UK economy and the number of people it employs. And I very much welcome the important new London data contained in this strategy, showing that well over 100,000 people work in social enterprise in London. The work of Social Enterprise London and the London Development Agency in developing that data will be very useful for us in taking forward work at a national level. We want also to help the sector celebrate its successes. We are sponsoring awards. DTI has also this year supported a Social Enterprise Award as part of the Inner City 100 awards, which celebrate the fastest growing businesses in inner city areas. Making Social Enterprises Better Business Thirdly we want social enterprises to be better businesses. To achieve that, social enterprises need access to business advice and support, and to finance and funding. Business Support and Training We are working with service providers to ensure that appropriate services are available to social enterprises and that their take up is increased. Small Business Service is very important here. The strategy that SBS will be publishing shortly has social enterprise as a clear priority, so that, in future, each Business Link will have to say clearly in its Business Plan how it intends to support social enterprises, and what steps it will take to increase take up. We shall be able to monitor progress towards the strategy's stated aim to ensure that all Business Links offer appropriate services for social enterprise – and to more of them. I came across very good examples of Business Link support for social enterprise on my tour, but I know that is not the picture everywhere, and it needs to be. We know that there are specialist elements of support that are better offered by those immersed in social enterprise. So we are working with the social enterprise sector to encourage the provision of practitioner-led training events across the country. We have made some progress:
Finance and Funding We are:
We are establishing two new groups to monitor progress on all of this and advise on future actions:
London London has some of the leading examples of the social enterprise sector – I have already mentioned Ealing Community Transport which now has recycling contracts covering 2.5% of the UK population, and Greenwich Leisure with an income of £9 million, whose model has now been replicated in 21 local authorities. I do think this Strategy for London marks an important step forward in developing a coordinated approach to those challenges across London. I will be watching in great interest to see how things progress from here. Thank you. |
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Other speeches by Stephen Timms MP
(the following are available from the archive) |
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