Graeme yesterday spoke in a debate on social enterprises. His speech is below or your can watch it at http://www.scottishparliament.tv/20170209_debates?in=00:36:02&out=00:42:12.
It is quite inspiring to look at the scale of the social enterprise presence in Scotland and the rate at which the sector is expanding. If any justification for holding this debate were required, it would be found in the fact that more than 5,000 social enterprises are already operational in Scotland, with the sector contributing £1.68 million annually to our economy and supporting in excess of 112,000 jobs. There are 200 start-ups each year, so it really is a growth area. More than that, however, it is an ethical and inclusive growth area in which, for example, women are far better represented at the top than is the case in other sectors.
As the cabinet secretary put it in the final sentence of her foreword to the strategy report,
“I … look forward to the full realisation of this dynamic, responsive, movement for change.”
There is no doubt that the 10-year strategy that has been laid out, supplemented by three-year action plans, has the potential to help to deliver that realisation.
One third of social enterprises are located in rural areas. My rural constituency of Angus South is home to a thriving employee-controlled social enterprise that delivers support services to 600 people across the whole county of Angus—in towns, villages, small settlements and the remoter areas. It is a pretty good example of what can be achieved using the social enterprise model.
Care About Angus was launched in November 2015 on the back of the local council pulling out of delivering home-help services. It began with 28 staff who were drawn from the ranks of council employees who had taken redundancy packages; it now has 60 employees. It started out with 210 clients, and it now has almost triple that number. The services that it provides go beyond basic home help and include volunteer driving, befriending, cooking and shopping. It is a growing success story, but it was not without its initial challenges. Despite the national policy support for social enterprises, it proved to be difficult for Care About Angus to secure significant funding for start-up expenditure, even though the service was filling a gap that had been created by the local authority’s withdrawal of provision that was running at a loss of £120,000 a year but meeting a clear need.
Of course, not all social enterprises survive, even when they are underwritten. Arbroath, in my constituency, and a vulnerable group of young people are only too painfully aware of that. Arbroath High Street was home to Darling’s coffee shop—an award-winning venture run by the charity Enable Scotland, which employed and trained youngsters with learning difficulties. It was much cherished by those who worked there and their families and, indeed, by the many customers that it attracted.
However, unrelated financial challenges led to Enable withdrawing from social enterprise and, despite the considerable efforts that were made to secure a future for Darling’s and the possibility of national funding to meet the enhanced staff supervision costs that the model incurred, the cafe sadly closed its doors early last year.
Thankfully, that failure does not reflect a trend. Locally in Angus, a number of exciting social enterprises are springing up, and we are seeing groups that are heading towards establishing themselves as social enterprises. Not least among the latter is the Kirriemuir Regeneration Group, which has its roots in the events of April 2015, when the town was confronted by the news that the council-owned camera obscura would be shutting its doors.
Six townsfolk came together and, within two months, the facility had reopened. In its first year of operation, it attracted approaching three times the number of visitors that it had in the preceding 12 months when operated by the National Trust for Scotland. The Kirriemuir Regeneration Group has also taken on the running of the nearby public toilets, has reopened the local pub in Northmuir, has helped to improve the Kirrie Den park and has taken on running other public toilets in the town centre. On top of that, the group’s members help to deliver the highly successful Bonfest. Once wages are paid to four staff, profits are given to community groups. The group is aiming to become a full social enterprise in due course.
Statistics show that one in four social enterprises is focused on a single community. I am impressed by the efforts in the village of Inverkeilor to open a community-run shop selling essential groceries and promoting local crafts and produce for locals, passing trade and visitors alike. Those behind the proposal have engaged proactively with those who run an already established community shop in Kirkmichael in Ayrshire in order to pick their brains, as it were. In that regard, I cannot help but think that the effectiveness and impact of the strategy that we are debating here would be enhanced by delivering low-level mentoring of some kind. There is lots of high-level stuff in the strategy document but, beneath that, it strikes me that having someone who has been over the course and is just a phone call away to advise about dos and don’ts could be of real practical benefit, especially to new, small-scale social enterprises. I wonder whether the basic census information that was gathered in 2015 might provide a basis for that.
Of course, as well as providing help and advice, exciting new, innovative social enterprises need financial pump-priming. It will not surprise members to learn that I have one of those organisations, too, in the Angus South area. Community First, which seeks to empower individuals, groups and organisations by supporting them to develop skills and knowledge, is rapidly finding its feet. Primarily, it seeks to improve employability skills, digital inclusion and social funds for innovation and regeneration. It has already been working unpaid in the areas of criminal justice and the elderly and is about to begin engagement work with Angus Carers. Its ethos is: see a need, meet that need. One could just as easily apply that ethos to Care about Angus or the Kirriemuir Regeneration Group.
As an MSP, I welcome that approach and the successes that it produces. In our work as members of the Scottish Parliament, we encounter plenty of intransigence and the “Sorry, it’s always been done this way,” no-can-do attitude. It is so refreshing to engage with social enterprises such as those that I have described, with their can do, will do approach. I welcome the efforts of Scotland’s social enterprises and the Government’s strategy to help the movement to maximise its potential.
