Six locations chosen for £33m programme to boost social economy & tackle inequality
Melanie May | 30 January 2020 | News
Six locations in England are to take part in an experimental £33 million programme to tackle inequality through boosting their social economy.
Selected to take part in Local Access, which is a partnership between Access – The Foundation for Social Investment, and Big Society Capital, from a shortlist of 12, Bradford, Bristol, Gainsborough, Greater Manchester (Bolton, Oldham, Stockport and Wigan), Hartlepool, Redcar & Cleveland, and Southwark in London will now begin developing detailed funding and investment plans.
Each will receive a mix of support, grant funding and repayable investment to grow their local charity and social enterprise sector as part of increasing prosperity and boosting the local economy, with the ultimate aim of reducing inequality.
The six places will have access to funds totalling £33 million, £25m of which will be to enable local charities and social enterprises to access loans and other investment products to help grow their enterprise activity, become more resilient and enable more local people to benefit from their work. A further £8 million of grants will support organisations at an earlier stage of growth to develop their enterprise plans and support social infrastructure.
Each of the locations has seen a partnership come together and develop a shared vision for the growth of the social economy over the last six months. The partnerships are unique to each place, but commonly represent social enterprises, local authorities and local sector infrastructure organisations.
The visions of the partnerships build on the opportunities in each place. Some focus on developing their place as a destination for social enterprise, or removing barriers to setting up new social businesses. Others focus on raising existing aspirations, plugging gaps in support and bringing together initiatives into a thriving ecosystem.
The six partnerships will now begin a co-design process with Access and Big Society Capital to refine the detail of their enterprise development and investment plans with an expectation that the first place based programmes will launch in the second part of 2020.
Seb Elsworth, Chief Executive of Access, said:
“We all know charities and social enterprises do good work in our communities, but the sector’s power as an economic force, one which can help reshape local economies and in so doing tackle the most entrenched inequality, is often overlooked.
“We are delighted to be working with six hugely ambitious places to help them to realise this potential and grow their local social economies through the tools of enterprise support and access to investment through blended finance.”
Cliff Prior, Chief Executive of Big Society Capital, said:
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“Where you were born should not affect your opportunity to live a happy and fulfilling life. But there are many areas in the UK that have experienced high levels of deprivation for many years, and even in relatively prosperous areas there can be pockets that reveal huge levels of inequality.
“We believe the Local Access programme offers an innovative approach to levelling up the disparity between places through developing the social economy. Crucially it is a pilot programme, and so we look forward to gathering the learning emerging from each of the places as the programme progresses.”
In March 2019 twelve places were invited to apply. In the end, eleven applications were submitted at the end of October as two places merged. Each place was visited by a team from Access and Big Society Capital during November and December 2019.
On the process Elsworth added:
“Each place we had invited to apply has done a huge amount of work to bring a partnership together and develop a vision for how grant and investment capital through Local Access could help grow their local social economy. All were compelling, but the ones we have chosen are where we feel that the tools we bring can make the most impact.”
Of the £33m, £10m will come from Access to provide the grant subsidy for the blended social investment (sourced from Dormant Accounts), while around £15 million of matching repayable finance will come from Big Society Capital for the blended social investment, and £8 million will come from Access’ existing endowment from the UK Government to support enterprise development activity.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.