A NEW report from the Auditor General for Wales suggests that the public sector has missed out on opportunities to support and grow the social enterprise sector in Wales, suggesting that “Social Enterprises can provide important services, but most local authorities lack a coherent strategy and are not working collaboratively to help support their growth and development”.
The report highlights the benefits that social enterprises can offer in the fight to tackle poverty in our communities. It notes that social enterprises often offer services in disadvantaged areas that would otherwise not be available; they create new employment opportunities and contribute to economic development in deprived communities, and often directly target their work to help disadvantaged people.
The report also showed that most local authorities have yet to map the social enterprises within their area, leading to missed opportunities to promote a supply chain that ensures that profits are kept locally and reinvested for the good of the community. It also highlighted that, to date, no local authorities in Wales had a dedicated Social Enterprise strategy, with 10 of the 21 local authorities stating that they have a “wider policy, strategy and/or plan that identifies the contribution of Social Enterprises”.
Local authorities will soon have direct access to resources to help them stimulate local economic development in the form of the Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF).
Cwmpas, the UK’s largest development agency for co-operatives, social enterprises, and employee-owned businesses, believe that the UKSPF can be used to rebuild the local ecosystem to support the sector in every local authority in Wales.
Cwmpas has been supporting social enterprise, co-operatives, and employee-owned businesses across Wales for over 40 years. Cwmpas team members were originally funded by, and based within local authorities, linking in with economic development staff on the ground and proactively working with communities to help them identify and communicate local problems, and more importantly, formulate solutions. These local collaborations, almost half a century ago, led to the formation of strong social enterprises, the majority of whom are still trading today.
David Madge, Project Manager at Cwmpas, said “Social enterprises demonstrate that it is possible to do business better. They illustrate how to be innovative and entrepreneurial whilst still being socially responsible and they are constantly raising the bar of what is considered good practice in business and delivery to the public sector.
The opportunity to work with social enterprises and to maximise the impact of public sector spend is still there. UKSPF gives us a real opportunity to learn from the past, look to the future and respond positively to the findings of the Wales Audit Report”.
