Over lunch in a cafe in an assisted living tower block, I learned about Sustainable Enterprise Strategies (SES) from its director Kevin Marquis. The cafe is run by the people associated with Sunderland Home Care and staffed by people with learning disabilities.

This remarkable organisation, in the same building as Sunderland Home Care has been helping local people into jobs and supporting community businesses for 25 years.

Since 1983 they have set up 85 social enterprises, trading at around £15 million pounds, two of which are businesses with a turnover of more than £3 million, and 3 trading at over a million.

During 2006-7 alone, SES assisted in 210 new enterprises, of which 70% were by people who were unemployed.

Although they have been successful and along with Sunderland Home Care have really put Sunderland on the map as a leader in the UK, they feel there is a postcode lottery for social enterprise support around the country. Unfortunately not so far away, the Durham Cooperative Development initiative collapsed . (As an aside, building coops in the 1970’s were known as ‘Sunderlandic’ so there does seem to be a hospitable culture for this approach there.)

SES uses regeneration money to build capacity for entrepreneurs, giving them technical support, advising them on legal structures and helping them develop business plans. I asked whether this did not duplicate the work that Business Link was supposed to be doing, and the general feeling is that Business Link has not supported Social Enterprise to the extent it could have.

A van drove by with ‘Compass Community transport’ on the side, another project they had helped to establish. Just across the road from the office, a dance centre too has been developed; it receives referrals from GPs for patients requiring exercise, stretching or weight loss programmes.

Kevin and his codirector Mark Saddington have written a number of papers available on line at www.ses.coop.

Photo: Co-directors of Sustainable Enterprise Strategies, Kevin Marquis and Mark Saddington