RDAs recognise the value that social enterprises (SEs) bring as businesses providing significant economic benefits to regions while delivering social benefits and/or enhancing the environment.
RDAs have various investment routes for supporting SEs, including funding through the social enterprise networks, direct investment into SEs, provision of social enterprise grants/voucher schemes, and development of mentoring schemes. From 2007/08, the Office of the Third Sector (OTS) has funded a four year programme to enable each of the nine RDAs to develop SE support across the country.
The RDAs also deliver support for start-up and existing SEs through the Business Link service and regional Solutions for Business products, which are open and accessible to all businesses. To filter the information to obtain the ‘type’ of organisation that has received mainstream business support would incur disproportionate cost and as such the following data relate only to the support provided through projects and investments specifically directed at SEs. The RDAs expenditure on social enterprise start-ups cannot be separated from the support provided to established SEs.
£000 RDA 2004/05 2005/06 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 AWM1 42 245 121 826 1,274 EEDA 62 170 283 1,066 3,354 EMDA 2,286 4,413 3,385 2,569 2,812 LDA2 n/a n/a n/a 476 740 NWDA3 1,530 1,714 2,931 1,919 917 ONE 172 200 190 247 326 SEEDA4 n/a 158 179 231 758 SWRDA 288 245 520 736 974 YF5 n/a n/a 2,189 3,789 5,139 1 AWM: The figures are conservative estimates as data prior to 2007/08 do not include Business Link activity. Neither Business Link nor Social Enterprise West Midlands collected the requested data prior to April 2007. 2 LDA: Where figures are unavailable, this is because there was no funding directly attributable to supporting the social enterprise sector. However, there may have been funding for the sector in these years within mainstream LDA programmes which cannot be disaggregated. 3 NWDA: Business Link figures can not be provided prior to 2007/08, when their current provider began delivering the project. 4 SEEDA: Prior to 2005/06, Business Link was not managed by SEEDA and figures are not available. 5 YF: Did not hold the Business Link contract before 2006-07. YF are unable to provide figures for the funding that Business Link assigned to social enterprise support.
RDAs recognise the value that social enterprises (SEs) bring as businesses providing significant economic benefits to regions whilst delivering social benefits and/or enhancing the environment.
RDAs have various investment routes for supporting SEs, including funding through the social enterprise networks, direct investment into SEs, provision of social enterprise grants/voucher schemes, and development of mentoring schemes. From 2007/08, the Office of the Third Sector (OTS) has funded a four year programme to enable each of the nine RDAs to develop SE support across the country.
In addition, RDAs also deliver support for start-up and existing SEs through the Business Link service and regional Solutions for Business products, which are open and accessible to all businesses. As such, it is not always possible to differentiate between the start up and support of SEs from that of other businesses. Only projects that directly support or invest in SEs are reflected in the following data. In addition, it is not always possible for RDAs to disaggregate between SE start-ups and other SE support.
The RDAs are only able to provide data on the number of social enterprises established over the past five years that have had direct contact with the RDAs.
RDA Year Total number of social enterprises established Total number of social enterprises assisted AWM1 2004-05 — 5 2005-06 — 14 2006-07 — 9 2007-08 — 640 2008-09 — 540 EEDA2 2004-05 — 107 2005-06 — 114 2006-07 — 119 2007-08 — 215 2008-09 — 330 EMDA3 2004-05 — — 2005-06 7 407 2006-07 1 1,045 2007-08 31 523 2008-09 83 1,038 LDA4 2004-05 — — 2005-06 — — 2006-07 — — 2007-08 — 498 2008-09 — 1,980 NWDA5 2004-05 134 — 2005-06 54 — 2006-07 60 — 2007-08 57 108 2008-09 49 610 ONE6 2004-05 4 10 2005-06 3 0 2006-07 8 72 2007-08 69 561 2008-09 181 488 SEEDA7 2004-05 — — 2005-06 — — 2006-07 — — 2007-08 5 214 2008-09 322 1,370 SWRDA8 2004-05 — 1 2005-06 — 1 2006-07 — 1 2007-08 52 950 2008-09 44 1,095 YF9 2004-05 66 143 2005-06 57 180 2006-07 48 554 2007-08 12 617 2008-09 110 1,221 1 AWM: The figures are conservative estimates as data prior to 2007/08 do not include Business Link (BL) activity. Neither BL nor Social Enterprise West Midlands collected the requested data prior to April 2007. 2 EEDA: EEDA is unable to disaggregate between ‘established’ and ‘start-up’ businesses. As such, the data provided refer to the total number of SEs assisted over the past five years. 3 EMDA: Data are unavailable for 2004/05 as this is prior to the introduction of the nationally agreed Tasking Framework. 4 LDA: Where figures are unavailable this is because there was no funding directly attributable to supporting the social enterprise sector. However, there may have been funding for the sector in these years within mainstream LDA programmes which cannot be disaggregated. 5 NWDA: Prior to 2007/08, the number of social enterprises assisted was not recorded separately on the tasking framework. Data provided for 2007/08 and 2008/09 are the combined outputs of NWDA and Business Link NW. BL NW was established in April 2007. 6 ONE: Figures prior to 2007/08 do not include BL services and therefore do not reflect the true figure of total number of SEs established and/or assisted. ONE is unable to provide BL figures prior to 2007/08 when their current provider began delivering the project. 7 SEEDA: Business Link was not managed by SEEDA in 2004/05, and although SEEDA did manage BL in 2005/06 and 2006/07 the data required was not recorded. The new BL contract came into force on 1 April 2007 and from then reporting requirements changed. 8 SWRDA: The South West RDA supports the regional social enterprise network, and the numbers recorded relate to the regional social enterprise network and to the support provided through BL providers. The South West RDA does not collect data on individual social enterprises supported. Contracts with our current BL providers started in 2007, so data for BL assisted businesses is not available before this. 9 YF: Figures provided before 2008/09 do not include beneficiary data from BL as this predates the current BL provider. The figures provided for 2008/09 have not compared beneficiary data collected by BL and YF separately as this would incur disproportionate cost.