by Gareth | Dec 2, 2020 | Social Enterprises
Last week we launched an ambitious five-year plan for social enterprise in Plymouth. Why did we do this and why now?
Plymouth Social Enterprise Network (PSEN) believes that developing social enterprises is a fundamental way to help Plymouth become a better city to live and work in. Indeed, we feel confident in saying that Plymouth is already a better city because of the great work of our social enterprises, co-operatives and community businesses.
The social economy is leading the way in showing how businesses can create value for communities, individuals and in the protection of our natural world. Many of the social enterprises doing this in Plymouth are highlighted in the strategy.
But we think we can go further. We face serious social, economic and environmental problems in Plymouth and the wider world. These have been brought into sharp focus by the Covid-19 crisis. We must learn from these challenges and build back better. Simply put we need a greener, fairer economy.
We recognise that the current emergencies we are facing – such as climate crisis, inequality, poor mental health, racism and enduring poverty – are symptoms of the way that we organise our world and, particularly, our economy. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us that we need to re-think our economy to ensure we tackle all these issues more effectively. This includes re-imagining the role that businesses play in our economy and society.
We want to see a city where:
- Businesses are good for people and planet
- People with good ideas are supported to put them into practice
- Business ownership and wealth and power is widely shared
- Social enterprise is central to the way we do business
- There are a variety of social enterprise models such as co-ops, community businesses, Community Interest Companies and more
- Social enterprise is understood and people think of it as the model of choice when setting up a business
- Social enterprises have access to the very best business advice and investment.
Our strategy sets out a wide ranging and bold five-year vision for social enterprise in Plymouth. And for us social enterprise means co-operatives, community businesses, trading charities, community interest companies and more. If, as a city, we deliver on this strategy we think we can go a long way to delivering the vision above.
Our strategy is developed on strong foundations. In 2013 Plymouth became the UK’s first Social Enterprise City. That award – from Social Enterprise UK – recognised the scope, depth and activities of the social enterprise community in the city. The Social Enterprise City ‘badge’ has led to investment and business advice schemes; it has raised awareness of this type of business and has helped social enterprise become better understood and respected in Plymouth. But there is much more to do.
Social enterprises need great business advice, increased access to finance and markets and courageous institutional policies that enable and support. We need to stimulate start-ups, raise awareness with the general public and work in schools to inspire young minds and show that social enterprise is the past, present and future. We need to build a movement for social change through business.
The strategy builds on research we conducted with social enterprises in Plymouth in 2019 and 2020. It has been developed in partnership with a range of partners in the public and private sector and with social enterprises themselves.
Over the previous five years social enterprise has grown in our city. There are more of them. They employ more people. They work in the most disadvantaged areas of Plymouth and bring in more, much needed income to the city’s communities. But going beyond that; the last five years has shown that a better way of doing business is not a work of fiction. It is real; right here and now and it is growing. We need to continue that trajectory for the next five years.
PSEN cannot do this alone. We already work in partnership with the organizations named in the strategy and we need them and others to be bold and ambitious in creating a better world.
So, join us. Help us deliver this work and this vision over the next five years. We believe we can, collectively, create a prosperous economy for all that tackles deep-rooted social and environmental problems.
by Gareth | Nov 30, 2020 | Social Enterprises
Last week we attended three important meetings and promoted Plymouth’s social enterprises.
The first was Plymouth Resurgam Growth Board. At this meeting we heard from Public Health about the latest on Covid-19 in the city and how plans to build back better with a greener and fairer economy are progressing. We presented the new strategy for social enterprise in the city. The strategy was well received and the board was particularly interested in the social value and supply chain elements of the strategy.
We then attended the national SEUK Social Enterprise Futures conference and took part in important debates about government policy and the future of social enterprise. There were great speeches from:
Paul Polman (ex-Unilever CEO) who said: “Social enterprises shouldn’t just be at the table, they should OWN the table!”
Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics) who talked about the need for businesses to have more “living purpose, going beyond themselves” and the importance of ownership and finance.
Gordon Brown (ex-PM!) who said: ”There is no route the future that does not have social enterprise at its centre”.
June O’Sullivan (CEO, London Early Years Foundation) who wanted to see a: “high street of social enterprises”.
Finally, we took part in the Spend4Plymouth round table meeting – exploring how we can get Plymothians to spend more with Plymouth’s business and particularly our great social enterprises. This work ties in with elements of the social enterprise strategy for Plymouth.
by Gareth | Nov 16, 2020 | Social Enterprises
Plymouth Social Enterprise Network (PSEN) has today launched a Social Enterprise Strategy – a five-year plan to boost Plymouth’s social enterprises and help create a greener, fairer economy. The plan also aims to retain and build on Plymouth’s reputation as the UK’s leading social enterprise city.
PSEN Board Member, Gareth Hart, said: “We want to build upon our achievements so far, develop these and go into whole new areas such as technology and digital. Social enterprise seems to answer many of the questions being raised as people look towards a post-Covid society.
“This strategy is full of examples of Plymouth’s great social enterprises and shows how businesses can create value for communities and individuals, making our city and the wider world a better place to live and work in.”
The five priorities highlighted in the strategy are based on two years of consultation and development and are underpinned by the belief that a prosperous economy can also support a community, tackling deep-rooted social and environmental problems.
Plymouth became one of the UK’s first Social Enterprise Cities in 2013, recognizing the scope, depth, and activities of the social enterprise community in the city. Since then, there has been a significant international interest with people from Sweden, South Africa, Jamaica, Italy and others visiting Plymouth to find out more about our success. The five year plan will help to ensure that the city retains its place as the UK’s leading social enterprise city.
Gareth continued: “Social enterprise has become better understood and respected in Plymouth, but there is more to do. Social enterprises need more support, the general public need to be made more aware of what they can achieve and young people need to be inspired if we want a more compassionate, fairer, more diverse and more environmentally sustainable society.”
The strategy priorities include boosting business advice and access to finance for social enterprise; stimulating social entrepreneurship and start-ups; building more markets for social enterprises and developing more policy and advocacy work to promote social enterprise. The priorities will be reviewed regularly by PSEN and their partners to assess emerging themes and to make sure the strategy is still addressing the needs of local social enterprise.
The strategy will be launched on Monday 16th November as part of Plymouth’s Social Enterprise City Festival, which consists of over 20 online and in person events on the theme of ‘Educating the Economy.’
Download the strategy here
by Gareth | Nov 14, 2020 | Social Enterprises
COVID-19 is showing us that a health issue can not only devastate the lives of those directly in the path of the virus, but can also close shops and high streets, force hundreds of thousands of businesses to struggle and place millions on furlough or out of work. Never has the fundamental link between health and the economy been more clearly underlined.
Yet there is little in the way of joined up public health and economic policy for the Government to draw on going forward. The economy is steered by policies such as Rishi Sunak’s Winter Economy Plan – which barely mentions health – and the UK’s industrial strategy, published in 2017, which has scant references to the importance of health as a component of the economy.
At a local level, opportunities to link health and the economy – to ensure a healthy, productive workforce – are being missed. Devon and Somerset’s Productivity Plan rarely discusses the health of the workforce, yet the local Clinical Commissioning Groups are co-signatories to the green paper behind this strategy. In comparison, Greater Manchester’s Local Industrial Strategy makes ‘population health’ an explicit aim and cites health over two hundred times.
Does this matter? You could see COVID-19 as an unusual event and argue it is not necessary to go to the lengths of rethinking the relationship between public health and the economy – we can simply develop a vaccine or learn to live with the virus and continue with our lives.
Well it matters because, where health and economic policy are joined up, the social and economic benefits are huge. For instance, mental health hugely affects productivity – how efficiently a business can create a profit. The Centre for Mental Health estimates that poor mental health in the UK workforce costs businesses almost £35 billion a year with an annual cost to the whole UK economy of nearly £100 billion a year. By far the largest share of this is not sick pay, but through employees who are at work but unwell and under-performing – this is known as ‘presenteeism’.
We could take Manchester’s lead and focus more on health and the economy. Mental health provision there is being pioneered as part of employment support. Imagine being unable to work effectively because of mental ill health but knowing that your employer and local authority understands and can offer tailored support.
There are wider economic issues which affect health. These include being in work or not, wage levels, contracts terms and conditions, lack of or low sick pay and other entitlements.
So how could we begin to tackle health and the economy? Government could incentivize health in the workforce through tax reliefs and also legislate to make employment law more health conscious. Local and national authorities could also unleash the power of the billions of pounds of public money they spend by insisting that firms they contract with adopt work-place wellbeing measures.
Employers could pay all staff a proper living wage as a minimum; ending in-work poverty and the ill-effects of inadequate housing and poor nutrition. Employers can aim to offer decent jobs with a sense of purpose and fulfilment, they can reduce zero-hours contracts and improve sick pay. These things are known to protect mental health and wellbeing. Businesses could develop more responsibility with a purpose to tackle social and environmental issues and do so with innovation and creativity.
Sound far-fetched? Well these businesses exist. They are called social enterprises – famous examples include The Eden Project and The Big Issue. These businesses thrive and trade ensuring that the health and wellbeing of their staff and their communities is part of their work. Their ethos is one where the health of everyone is as important as making a profit. Recent research in Plymouth shows that 94% of social enterprises there offer support around health and wellbeing for their staff.
COVID-19 has shown us that things need to change and that health and economic thinking need to become more connected. Social enterprises are twenty years down the track with this and the rest of the world needs to catch up. We need to build back better and understand more deeply that without health there is no economy.
By Lucy Blackley and Gareth Hart, Directors of Iridescent Ideas CIC
