As the Prime Minister said last year - Big Society is a vision of a society where people in their everyday lives, their homes, their neighbourhoods, their workplace, don’t always turn to officials, local authorities or central government for answers to the problems they face, but instead feel both free and powerful enough to help themselves and their own communities.

 

A bigger and stronger society will improve quality of life:

• Citizens will feel able to take action on the causes they care about – I hope you will get an opportunity to learn about the work of Coin Street Community Builders as an excellent example of people taking action to improve their community
• They will receive more responsive services delivered by innovative suppliers and more tailored to personal needs
• They will see a greater sense of pride and belonging in their communities

 

BIG SOCIETY – WHAT IT MEANS

 

Big Society is not just a handful of programs or policies scattered across different policy areas – in fact, it is not a central government program

 

it is about a fundamental shift in the job of government and relationship with the citizen. It stems from the belief that this country has become too centralised, too bureaucratic and too top down. It is about accepting that the Government does not have all the answers to every problem society faces.

 

For policymakers, it means radically changing the way we do things – changing our defaults to make government intervention the last option instead of the first. It means that we do not automatically ask, “What can the government do to solve this problem?”

 

If we do have a question, it is: “How can we empower individuals and communities to help themselves and their communities?”

 

At the heart of the Big Society is enabling ‘people to help people’, it is about active participation and citizen responsibility.

 

That does not mean the government just pulls back and leaves it all up to individuals – but it does mean shifting that boundary a little and expecting people to take more ownership of, and accept more responsibility for, the things they care about.

 

Big Society has three main elements

 

Social action – encouraging and enabling people to play a more active part in society.

 

Opening up public services – ending the public sector monopoly on key services by enabling charities, social enterprises, private companies and employee-owned co-operatives to compete to offer people high quality services.

 

Community empowerment – pushing power down to communities, neighbourhoods and individuals.

 

CIVIL SOCIETY

 

As Minister for Civil Society, I am particularly interested in the role of civil society organisations and how they can contribute to Big Society

 

by civil society organisations, I mean social enterprises, charities, and voluntary and community organisations

 

With the government’s focus on Big Society and localism, the future holds great opportunities for the sector as power is devolved to local level and public services open up

 

We will support the sector to take those opportunities by:
Making it easier to set up and run a social enterprise, voluntary organisation or charity
Making it easier to access resources and
Making it easier to work with the state

 

today I will focus on social enterprises

 

WHY ARE WE SUPPORTING SOCIAL ENTERPRISES?

 

 

Social enterprises are integral to a more active, fairer and more prosperous society.

 

They are vitally important for their contribution to Big Society and the economy

 

Social enterprises support citizens and communities to take power into their own hands and build the Big Society. They can:

 

Empower communities to take control through owning and running local services such as their local shops or pub, and reaching out to some of the most disadvantaged people in our society
[e.g. the Westway Development Trust, helping their diverse local London community through projects as varied as school sports, services for ethnic minority communities and adult education].

 

Improve public services, by shaping service design through engaging communities and users, pioneering new approaches, reaching those in the community that other providers don’t
[e.g. Turning Point’s Connected Care work, bringing the voice of the community into the design and delivery of health, housing, education and social care services].

 

Provide opportunities for greater social action and responsibility, for example by helping citizens volunteer, donate their own time and expertise, and by acting as powerful advocates for citizens
[e.g. Stroud Community Agriculture, a local farming business including community activities and volunteers].

 

Social enterprises are also an important part of the business community, contributing to our economic prosperity:

 

In the UK, there are about 68,000 social enterprises.

 

they employ 900,000 people and contribute £24 billion to UK output

 

they pioneer new markets and business models, and develop skills.

 

HOW ARE WE SUPPORTING SOCIAL ENTERPRISES?

 

Across the whole of government, mainstream reforms recognise the potential of social enterprises. We want to:

• make it easier to start-up and run social enterprises
• leverage resources, opportunities and support to help social enterprises grow; and
• promote social enterprises in the public sector and beyond.

 

We are doing this by:

• increasing investment into social ventures
• opening public services to new providers
• providing business support to social enterprises
• creating a positive business environment
• providing transitional support

I will briefly describe each of these

 

Increasing investment

 

In February, we published Growing the Social Investment Market: A vision and strategy. It outlines our vision to:

• create a new pillar of finance for social ventures;
• allow social ventures to grow more dynamically;
• allow individual citizens to contribute to social goals through their personal finance choices; and
• offer new opportunities to investors, financial institutions and wider government.

We are working with leading social investment experts, such as Big Society Capital group (BSC), to take forward this strategy.

 

BSC is an independent financial institution that aims to increase investment in society. It will do this by supporting organisations that invest in the sector, helping them:

 

provide a greater range of financial services to social enterprises, charities and VCS organisations;

 

raise more money for onward investment into the sector;

 

become more sustainable and resilient themselves.

 

BSC will act as a wholesale investor for social investment and champion the sector to the public, stakeholders and investors. It will invest capital in intermediaries so that they are able to invest in frontline organisations. It will not make grants. It will also invest in developing a powerful infrastructure for the social investment sector.

 

In addition, we know that some organisations need help to become more investment ready. So we have announced a new Investment and Contract Readiness Fund of £10 million. This will provide grants to help ambitious social entrepreneurs buy in services from relevant intermediaries.

 

Opening up opportunities across the public sector

 

The Open Public Services White Paper stated that public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service. The vision is that:
Apart from those public services where the government has a special reason to operate a monopoly, every public service should be open so that, services can be delivered by a diverse range of providers.

 

To achieve this we will regularly assess barriers to entry and exit that may prevent diversity and innovation from being achieved, and recommend steps to address these barriers. This includes looking at how to enable a level playing field for all independent providers.

 

We are exploring innovative financing of public services e.g. we are working with four local authorities to develop social impact bonds to help finance a new approach to supporting chaotic families suffering multiple problems.

 

We are giving public sector workers new rights to form new mutuals and bid to take over the services they deliver, empowering millions of public sector workers to become their own bosses.

 

For example:
We are giving public sector workers, who want to spin out of the traditional public sector to deliver public services, a ‘right to provide’. Social enterprises, mutuals and cooperatives are key models for how these new organisations could operate.

 

A series of Mutual Pathfinders have been launched to help Government understand, by learning from the front line, what type of support and structures will best enable the development of employee-led mutuals on an ongoing basis. The Pathfinders are led by entrepreneurial public sector staff who want to take control of their own services. Examples of Pathfinders which are social enterprises include:

 

Anglian Community Enterprise, whose offerings include community health services and learning disability services to local communities in Essex.

 

Seqol, which delivers integrated adult community health and social care in Swindon

 

a Task Force has been set up to drive the agenda further and faster across the public sector

 

We will invest at least £10 million in the Mutual Support Programme, to support some of the most promising and innovative mutuals to become investment ready

 

From late 2011, a Mutuals Information Service (MIS) will offer guidance and advice to public sector organisations and individuals who wish to spin out from the public sector and become a mutual.

 

We will address the barriers that can constrain open public services. For example:

 

We will seek to eliminate pre-qualification questionnaires (PQQs) for all central government procurements under £100,000 (the EU threshold) and for larger procurements we will move towards greater use of the ‘open procedure’

 

Departments have published actions to increase the proportion of the value of contracts made with SMEs;

 

the Government will keep under review VAT barriers which impede public, private or VCSE organisations, from delivering public services.

 

Business support

 

Investment readiness and business capability support, such as financial skills training and help building robust business cases, are essential to supporting social enterprises.

 

Social enterprises can already access a range of support services including:

 

Mainstream business support, for example through the Business Link web-site

 

Local business support, for example through chambers of commerce

 

Support bodies specifically for social ventures

 

In addition, the Prime Minister launched Every Business Commits in December 2010. It asks businesses to help local SMEs including social enterprises, for example by providing mentoring support.

 

The 2010 Local Growth White Paper encourages social enterprises to apply to the Regional Growth Fund – a £1.4 billion fund running to April 2014 that aims to encourage enterprise and jobs in places that are heavily reliant on the public sector.

 

Creating a positive business environment

 

We are determined to reduce the red tape that prevents people from acting to improve their communities.

 

We commissioned an investigation into ‘what stops us all giving more time and money to charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises; and what stops the sector from growing’. In May, we received a report with a total of 17 recommendations on these topics. Work is underway to implement the recommendations and progress will be assessed in May 2012.

 

The government has also set up a broader Red Tape Challenge with the aim of reducing burdens on business and civil society. It is the result of a commitment to review the entire existing stock of more than 21,000 regulations

 

Transitional support

 

We have acted to mitigate the short term damage to the capacity of the sector.

 

The £107 million Transition Fund was created and executed quickly to support over 1000 of the most vulnerable organisations delivering frontline services that stand to be affected in the short term by reductions in spending.

 

SOCIAL FRANCHISING AND BIG SOCIETY

 

I was interested to see the results of the Network’s research into the scale of social franchising

 

It shows that social franchising is contributing to the impact of social enterprise

 

And suggests it has the potential to increase that impact further and to help grow a bigger and stronger society

 

I am pleased that you have come from so many different countries to share your learning

 

I look forward to hearing of the results of today’s discussions

 

I would be interested in learning more about:
Are particular types of social enterprise well suited to franchising?

 

What are the business support requirements of franchisers and franchisees?

 

How can franchising be financed?

 

How does the impact of a franchise compare to that of a start-up social enterprise?

 

I am most interested in how social franchising can help local communities to build the Big Society by encouraging and enabling people to play a more active part in society; giving social enterprises the capacity to compete to offer high quality services; and helping to communities, neighbourhoods and individuals to handle the power that is being pushed down to them.