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Government and the sector working together to enhance promotion and support for social enterprise

15 March 2010

Following joint working between the Office of the Third Sector (OTS), the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) the Social Enterprise Coalition, the East Midlands Development Agency (emda) and other stakeholders from the third sector, the government and the sector have committed to seven actions to improve understanding of signposting to the wide range of business support services available to social enterprise. This is in response to findings that while there is a great deal of support and awareness of social enterprise, it is not well understood or signposted.

The seven actions are:

1. emda will undertake a regional review of the Solutions for Business portfolio to ensure that they are fully accessible to social enterprise.

2. emda will ensure that social enterprise issues are taken into account in the development of the Business Mentoring pilot.

3. Social Enterprise East Midlands (SEEM), working with emda and OTS will set up a regular working group of Regional Development Agency social enterprise leads and regional social enterprise bodies to support better joining up at the regional level and greater sharing of best practice at the national level. The group will be chaired by OTS.

4. BIS and OTS will ensure that the research and findings from the current work inform the BIS action research project into social enterprise business support.

5. BIS will work with OTS to look through the national adviser briefs it produces for the Business Link network, to ensure that they are not worded in a way that could suggest that social enterprises are not eligible to access the Solutions for Business products.

6. A representative from Business Link / businesslink.gov will work with the SETAS steering group to ensure that the revamped site complements and links effectively with Business Link and businesslink.gov.

7. OTS will publicise this work as part of the SE Summit follow-up.

These actions follow on from the commitment made by government at the Social Enterprise Summit in May 2009 to work with the sector to find ways to enhance promotion and support for social enterprise.

OTS and BIS produced a policy document in response to the Social Enterprise Summit that revealed the following high-level findings which informed the above seven actions:

• There is much support available to social enterprise, but the landscape is complex to navigate and needs to be better joined up
• Business Link is the key to social enterprise getting the most out of publicly funded business support
• The sector is becoming more mature and visible and must make the most of opportunities to join up existing promotion and support

Business support for social enterprise section

Other support and advice available to social enterprises:

• Business Link
• Social Enterprise Training and Support
• Social Enterprise Coalition