Thought Leadership

To reduce the severe pressure facing children’s services, the government must find alternatives to private equity profiteering, reform procurement for public benefit, and support partnerships between local authorities and social enterprises and cooperatives, MPs were told last week. Speaking at the first roundtable of the Social, Cooperative and Community Economy All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on public service provision, parliamentarians, local authority commissioners, and social enterprise providers explored the systemic barriers hampering effective care for society’s most vulnerable children and heard how mission-led providers could be better supported to deliver it. Challenges facing children’s residential services Provision for children needing an alternative to remaining within their immediate family is stretched across local authorities due to rising demand, funding cuts, procurement and commissioning limitations. Not enough children stay with extended family, foster care supply is limited – in part due to issues around access to appropriate properties. And residential care provision is too often in the hands of expensive, out-of-area, profiteering providers who don’t provide holistic and joined-up care.   Local authorities are struggling. The roundtable heard that 46% of councils are overspending their budgets by 20% or more, with many citing children’s services as the primary cause. The dominance of private equity was repeatedly identified as a structural issue. In Greater Manchester alone, 50% of children’s care providers are controlled by private equity firms, many of which are offshoring profits. “Private equity extracting profit and offshoring needs to stop” said one attendee. Barriers to positive children’s social care provision Social enterprise, co-op and charity provision offers cost-effective solutions – cost-effective not only because they aren’t off-shoring high profits, but because provision is child-centred, trauma-informed, locally-based and – increasingly – co-designed with local authorities around need and capacity. What is stopping this being the norm everywhere? Funding and finance Accessing suitable finance remains one of the greatest barriers to expanding mission-driven businesses’ children’s residential care provision. The upfront cost of setting up residential care - from property to compliance - was highlighted by attendees as prohibitive. One provider described “£100,000 runway costs” before a home can begin accepting children. Sourcing the right type of finance takes time, finance can be expensive, and grant funding is often too short-term or restrictive. A social investor told the roundtable: “We need more patient, impact-aligned capital and government funding can act as a catalyst for social investment.” Commissioning and regulatory constraints The procurement framework within local authorities, designed originally for large-scale goods provision, isn’t fit for the purpose of securing quality services at a local level – and as such often biases towards provision by profiteering firms.   Variations in planning regulations between local authorities mean mission-led providers face very different commissioning and regulatory issues depending on geography. Differences in commissioning culture, for example, mean that some councils are seen as risk-averse and less likely to facilitate mission-led provision. Similarly, in some areas, residential homes can be set up with minimal bureaucracy but elsewhere regulatory loopholes around approval of buildings and scale of provision can be prohibitive. Workforce challenges and high churn The absence of a professionalised workforce, including a lack of recognised qualifications or progression pathways, was cited as a major issue for provision. Low pay, lack of professional development, and poor status in the sector all contribute to workforce churn. One attendee described this as “entirely inappropriate,” given the responsibility care workers hold. Turnover of managers is particularly disruptive, as care homes must be reinspected by Ofsted even if managers move between sites within the same organisation. The lack of a “passport” system for staff was flagged as a fixable bottleneck. Social enterprise solutions: building local, trauma-informed care Despite these barriers, social enterprises, cooperatives, and other diverse mission-led businesses identified how they can provide more stable, child-focused, and community-rooted models of care. Finance and investment The UK’s social investment market now stands at £10 billion, creating new opportunities for blended finance. Social AdVentures, a Salford-based social enterprise, was held up as an example of how social investment and combined authority support can enable new models though convening multiple actors remains a complex task. Mission-led alternatives to private equity Social enterprises reinvest surpluses into services, enabling them to focus on long-term, trauma-informed care. They are well placed to support children with complex needs and prioritise relationships and wellbeing over short-term profit. Mandating open-book accounting and capping profits - currently up to 40% for some private equity firms - were floated as policy options to level the playing field. Localised, values-led commissioning Reserving contracts for public benefit organisations is already happening in parts of the UK, and speakers suggested this approach could inform wider policy. Ministers were urged to embed social value more directly into commissioning decisions. Roundtable attendees highlighted examples of small-scale provisions to address the acute needs of children with complex care requirements, as well as the value of long-term partnerships between providers and local authorities to ensure sustainable care solutions. Regional Care Cooperatives (RCCs), being developed through the Department for Education with the intention they will allow local authorities to partner with providers in a more integrated way, were discussed as a promising structure, potentially offering a single point of contact and shared vision for care. Professionalising and empowering the workforce Several solutions focused on improving staff conditions and morale. Social enterprises were praised for involving staff in business planning, providing training, and minimising reliance on agency staff – which can be a runaway cost in children’s services provision. Attendees called for structured training programmes and better career pathways, noting that 22% of children’s homes currently have no registered manager. Professionalising care roles and offering qualifications would improve retention, stability, and ultimately, outcomes for children. Asks and ambitions for reform As the government launches consultations into procurement reform, parliamentarians present, including Georgia Gould MP (the Cabinet Office Minister responsible for public sector reform) and Josh MacAlister MP, heard clear evidence that social enterprises are already delivering, but need the right support to sustain and scale. The current system is not built with social enterprises in mind; new legislation and guidance must explicitly create space for mission-led providers to flourish, providing cost-effective solutions with quality service outcomes. Attendees stressed that this will require bravery among commissioners, and for local authorities to be supported in taking creative, child-centred risks. Speakers also called for a fundamental shake-up of the care model, moving away from crisis-driven residential placements toward more flexible and therapeutic alternatives. Attendees called for the NHS to take a more direct role, one noting that “health sits on a lot of money and they are responsible for these children.” Greater alignment between social care and Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAHMS) was seen as essential to building joined-up, trauma-informed support. Ultimately, the ambition of roundtable participants was clear: to build a children’s care system that starts with the child, not the contract. That will require longer-term funding, shared purpose, and a willingness to put public value above private gain.

The 10 Year Plan feels like it's taken a lot of lessons from social enterprise models. But the Plan still seems blind to the significant contribution social enterprises make in delivering services, writes Social Enterprise UK Associate Director, Dan Gregory. Today (3 July) saw the much-heralded launch of the Government’s 10 Year Health Plan for England. It tells us three important things about the thinking in Wes Streeting’s department. First, this is a 10-year plan. Yet this Government has been elected for a 5-year term. So, this is ambitious, it’s aspirational. And perhaps a little detached from reality. Second, they see the launch of a document as significant. From all the recent invitations Social Enterprise UK has received from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), they are very keen that we read the output of what they’ve been doing for nearly a year. Even if they remain less keen to listen to what we have to say. Third, this is the Plan that will lead to delivery. To change. To the future of the NHS. What's in the Plan? But how? What is in the Plan? What does it say? The plan is long (166 pages) as we might expect. But is remarkably short on how. It helps to have ambitions before you set off, of course. But this isn’t really a complete plan. More of a direction. Perhaps this is wise, and Streeting understands that dictating everything from the top down or centre out is not the answer. The department is directing whilst not directing – the Plan is “tight on what, loose on how”. It’s less of a plan and more a series of bets, trials, pilots and avenues to explore. Change will be slow. New Foundation Trusts (FTs) and Neighbourhood Health Centres will be gradually rolled out through programmes. Various other whizzes – a Choice Charter and Patient Power Payments - will be trialled and “rolled out progressively". On the money side, "in the next 3 years we will make a start on the journey to establishing a new financial foundation." New tariff models will be slowly phased in. New "year of care" payments will be trialled in pioneering areas. Later this year they will "publish a 10-Year Workforce Plan". Of course, this may be quite sensible. But it’s clear that much of the plan is still to be designed and delivered. The new operating model will be "devolved and diverse". This means more messiness in the medium term for sure. But what’s the direction then? Well, the ambition is great. And it’s very much aligned with the ethos and experience of our social enterprise members working in health and care. The ambitions are around prevention and community. Empowered staff, with agile and autonomous models embedded in the local community. Financial incentives to break even and reinvest. Some of this is even quite explicit: "more money towards areas with disproportionate economic and health challenges". Great. No more bailing out FTs in deficit. Good. Hospitals will be expected to “do more as anchor institutions to support wider societal and economic goals. Through their procurement, supply chains and role as an employer, they have significant influence over social and economic development in their communities.” Also good. FTs will have more freedoms to retain surpluses, reinvest them and borrow for capital investment”. Indeed, they will be more like social enterprises. Then of course, there is a lot on the NHS app, on AI and other innovations which I won’t attempt to summarise here, even if I understood them. But some of the detail is rather more troubling. The big new idea is the Neighbourhood Health Centres which will “co-locate NHS, local authority and voluntary sector services, to help create an offer that meets population need holistically” a good idea, for sure. But who is going to tell local charities and social enterprises they are going to have to relocate - is that what this means!? Meanwhile, the financing of new Neighbourhood Health Centres looks a lot like a new wave of Private Finance Initiatives. Then the Plan also seems to effectively nationalise Healthwatch, which was a social enterprise experiment that will now be forgotten and airbrushed away. What about social enterprises? What does it say about social enterprise? There are (phew!) a few mentions. So, we have the recognition we wanted as a baseline – the flag in the sand. Indeed, there are also two case studies - Primary Care Sheffield and Live Well Manchester, which are built around social enterprise. But unhelpfully, the Plan refers to social enterprise at one point as "outside the NHS", which is infuriating. Perhaps, this is partly our fault for reinforcing this idea? I am often annoying our members by asking them to say, “We span out of the public sector” rather than “out of the NHS”. We are part of the NHS! This is indicative of the wider problem here. Large parts of the Plan don’t recognise at all that significant chunks of NHS services are not delivered by the public sector. Where it says - "every NHS provider should be an FT" - it clearly means every public sector provider, not every social enterprise, hospice or GP practice. This blind spot is maddening and doesn't seem to want to go away. Social enterprises deliver several billion of pounds’ worth of NHS services but still we are forgotten and fall between the cracks when it comes to the backlog bonus, access to digital and capital investment, CPD resources, international nurse recruitment, and the list goes on. At Social Enterprise UK, we keep fighting to be included and not forgotten and pull all the advocacy levers we can lean on. Sometimes we win! Some parts of DHSC and NHSE listen. But others don’t. We are currently working with some very engaged NHSE officials on equal access to digital investment, which will be even more critical as these pots of money grow. We are talking to NHSE about how their new structures within DHSC might replicate the old Social Enterprise Unit. But the next day we meet a senior strategist who doesn’t even know that in West Yorks, Plymouth, Bristol, Nottingham. Grimsby, Medway and beyond, we are the NHS outside of hospital. We provide urgent out of hours care to 2/3 of the population. Yet we are nearly invisible to some system leaders. Maybe they don’t like us. Maybe we are too awkward. Maybe we don’t fit and they know it, and hope we go away. Or maybe they know we aren’t where the problems are, and they are mainly focused on the problems. Maybe NHSE and DHSC are just a mess and half the staff are facing redundancy. Or maybe the NHS is simply a massive, complex system equivalent in size to the Hungarian or Moroccan economies. Influencing a system of that scale is a Sisyphean task. We keep on regardless! The Plan ends with a Wes Streeting afterword entitled "Be the Change", which many will know is the well-established motto of the social entrepreneur. While the system largely ignores us, and even puts barriers in our path, it also seems to be moving our way, and trying to build an NHS more like us. While we aren't winning (though also maybe not losing) the battle of ideas and policy, across the country we are winning in practice, through the daily work of our members and their staff, leading the way. Health and care social enterprises will carry on delivering the future, whatever the plan. To see a few examples of how social enterprises are already transforming the delivery of health and social care across the country, read our series of case studies produced in partnership with King's Fund and Baxendale.

Impact Hub Yorkshire celebrated a milestone five years of empowering individuals, communities, and businesses across the region with a special gala dinner at Bradford Live on 12th June. Nearly 300 guests and dignitaries gathered for the occasion, which also marked a significant moment for the city — the first event to be held in the newly restored Bradford Live ballroom since 2000.  The milestone comes shortly after His Majesty The King visited the organisation’s headquarters in Bradford’s Little Germany, where he met with social entrepreneurs and community leaders supported by the Impact Hub. The visit also marked the formal transition from Impact Hub Bradford to Impact Hub Yorkshire, reflecting the organisation’s ambition to scale and support communities and projects across the region.  Founded in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, Impact Hub Yorkshire emerged as a catalyst for driving innovation and positive change. Since then, it has supported over 1,000 individuals and businesses. From developing accessible funding models to leading regeneration projects, empowering young people, and championing inclusive economic growth in underserved communities, its work continues to create meaningful impact across the region.  The gala dinner at Bradford Live brought together community members, project partners, and supporters from across Yorkshire. It is also the first formal evening event to be held in the newly restored ballroom, making it a symbolic location for an organisation rooted in the regeneration of Bradford and committed to shaping the region’s future.  Kamran Rashid, CEO and founder of Impact Hub Yorkshire, said: Five years ago, we made the bold decision to launch Impact Hub in the middle of a pandemic, during a period of global uncertainty and personal change. What began as Impact Hub Bradford has grown into something far bigger – because we believed, and still believe, that meaningful change begins with community.   “Expanding to a Yorkshire-wide remit marks an important shift. It speaks to our belief that every community across this region deserves access to opportunity, investment, and space to lead. We’ve been privileged to work alongside some incredible partners over the years, and I’m deeply grateful to our sponsors and to Bradford Live for helping us mark this milestone in such a special way.”  Throughout the evening, guests enjoyed a three-course meal, networking, and talks and panel discussions from Kamran Rashid, Imran Hussain MP, Cllr Susan Hinchcliffe, and Kersten England CBE – Chair of Bradford City of Culture 2025. Sponsors included Bradford Live, Bradford UK City of Culture, the Broadway Shopping centre, Mylahore British Asian Kitchen, Biscayne Maintenance Services, Faum Architecture, Schofield Sweeney, and Jinnah Restaurants. With their support, the Impact Hub was able to host the evening for over 270 guests.   Impact Hub Yorkshire continues to support a wide range of projects, including partnerships with organisations such as Green Street, Pandora’s Box Desserts, the African Caribbean Achievement Project, and the Tasif Khan Community Boxing Academy.  Kamran concluded: “As we step into this next chapter, our commitment remains the same: to build a movement grounded in equity, shaped by collaboration, and driven by the people and places we serve.”

“Stop Fixing, Start Listening!” Meet the people training healthcare workers to hand power over to patients - and transforming lives in the process. It all began with curiosity. Twenty-five years ago, a physiotherapist asked a simple question: why do some stroke patients manage to find their way to a fulfilling life more speedily and completely than others? Obviously, the severity of the stroke plays a big part but even those with similar neurological and physiological impacts had very different experiences. Determined to find the answer, Fiona Jones decided to speak to stroke patients in depth. What she found was surprising: the key was the nature of their relationships. And the relationships that mattered were not just those between the patient and family and friends but, crucially, that between the patient and the healthcare workers trying to help them. Too often stroke patients felt disempowered by the way professionals interacted with them. Out of the very best of intentions, those professionals wanted to ‘fix’ their patients by taking control of their recovery, failing to fully acknowledge the complexity and diversity of their lives. The stroke patients that did better were those that helped to play a bigger role in their own care by managing their medication, rehabilitation regimes and pace of recovery independently of their clinicians – what is often termed ‘self-management’ A Bigger Story But extensive further research revealed something deeper. The secret to a truly fulfilling change in a stroke patient’s life was self-efficacy. Those who felt more in control of every aspect of their recovery also began to feel more in control of the lives that had been so disrupted by a severe medical condition. That meant moving beyond self-management’s focus on medicines, exercise and training and instead allowing the patient to shape the underlying methods, goals and style of recovery. This was radical stuff. As Fiona puts it: while self-management requires the patient to change their behaviours, an approach based on self-efficacy and empowerment requires the healthcare professional to change theirs. It means shifting mindset and practices away from any sense that the health worker knows best with ready-made solutions at hand. Instead, they need to act as expert collaborators led by the expectations, hopes and challenges identified by the patient themselves. It’s an ethos that originates with the heartfelt recognition that when it comes to their own lives, the person in front of you is the world-leading expert. Fast forward to 2013 and, after further research, Fiona founded Bridges Self-Management (with the support of City St. Georges and Kingston Universities) - a social enterprise designed to help health workers play that empowering role. This is far from easy. Health workers sometimes feel they are abdicating their responsibility by not coming up with quick solutions, not being in the lead. And when they do recognise the need for self-efficacy, the skills, strategies and language to enable that are often undeveloped. In addition, what they see around them is countless colleagues - often very highly regarded ones - doing things to rather than with their patients. Breaking down these personal and cultural norms requires lots of self-reflection, self-questioning and gradual, careful introduction of new approaches. But the impacts speak for themselves. Bridges’s work training staff who support people with Long-Covid was recently the subject of a randomised control trial. Called, appropriately enough, ‘Listen’, the project was found to have improved patients’ ability and confidence in managing their symptoms and doing everyday tasks. It also improved their sense of self-efficacy and emotional well-being. Most significantly, that greater sense of self-efficacy was directly related to the improvements in patients’ recovery. It is research that endorsed the findings of Fiona’s own initial enquiries all those years ago and the knowledge the Bridges team has accumulated through research and experience since it started work. Workers’ Liberation The impact of this way of working extends beyond the patients. Call it ironic, call it counter-intuitive, but it seems that by stepping back, listening and empowering the patient, the health worker actually ends up feeling more empowered themselves. Liberated from the strictures of routinised interventions and the pressure of taking sole responsibility for fixing their patients, health workers report being able to build much more fulfilling human relationships focused on helping people build a self-defined, decent life for themselves rather than achieve a set of externally set, medicalised milestones. It gives them more time. And most importantly, of course, they can see that working in this “Bridgey” way is better for the patients and their recovery. Again, the data speaks for itself. Of over 250 NHS staff trained by Bridges in the last 6 months alone, 84% said they are now listening more and ‘fixing less’. 94% said that Bridges was having a positive impact on their day-to-day work and 60% said working in the Bridges way had already increased their job satisfaction. Ultimately, the ethos of Bridges is a challenge not just to the professionals they work with but to a whole healthcare and public service system that is still built around doing to rather than doing with. Of course, there are many occasions when the enormous expertise of health workers must operate unhindered with little immediate regard for co-designing a solution - no-one undergoing cardiac arrest or a major trauma wants anything other than to be fixed by experts as rapidly as possible. But too much of this acute mentality has leached into every other aspect of healthcare - often reinforced by time pressures and lack of empowering skill sets. So, the question now is how we can make the training Bridges provides utterly normal across healthcare rather than something so out-of-the-ordinary that it can almost feel like a process of deprogramming for those seeking a better way of working. Given the theme, the final word should go to Jeremy - a patient with Long Covid. His testimony shows what happens when a health worker takes the time to really listen and co-design ways forward. His words speak with far greater eloquence of the power of patient empowerment than anything written here. Do find the time to listen! By Adam Lent This case study forms part of a series we are producing together with the healthcare consultancy Baxendale and think tank King’s Fund, to demonstrate the innovation shown by social enterprises delivering health and social care.

For impact to work, it can’t exist in a silo. Most profit-focused businesses are beholden to their shareholders and owners to generate as much revenue as they can, with no real obligation to give back. That is not the focus of social enterprise. Our business model centres purpose, and the best way to purposely serve your community is to work with the community. Cooperation is the name of the game. A strong role model of purpose-led community activity can be found in Ashford, named a Social Enterprise Place thanks to its collaborative ecosystem. “Collaboration throughout the social enterprise sector in Kent is really important,” said Rebecca Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Social Enterprise Kent (SEK). “We find through networking and bringing people together at conferences, events and training sessions, it creates a touchpoint to spark ideas and raise issues. It’s about bringing people together as a team and not working in silos is what makes the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector stronger.” Our member SEK have nurtured this impact community as they have done for the past 40 years. To find out more, we visited them at their new, volunteer-run SE Kitchen, now their second social supermarket in the county after Ramsgate. Ashford MP Sojan Joseph visiting the SE Kitchen They transformed this former art supply shop into a real community space, providing affordable and healthy grocery options from food charity FareShare as well as other suppliers working closely with local farmers (it is the garden of England after all). Of course, this work wouldn’t be possible without vital partnerships. In fact, they work with more than 100 partners, consistently delivering at least £1 millon a year in funding, allowing them to support great projects like the Social Impact Gateway or Thanet Social Enterprise Boost. From working with East Kent Health Care Partnership to highlight health inequalities to partnering with corporate organisations such as Amey for their Elevate programme creating apprenticeship opportunities for care leavers, they demonstrate how these conversations across organisations form a lynchpin of positive influence. After a delicious lunch provided by Lily’s Social Kitchen, we visited more of the local social enterprises which make up the rich network of organisations in our Places programme. These were some of the businesses championing the movement: Chatting with the volunteers at The Beehive Ashford The Beehive Ashford - a shop which not only sells second-hand clothes, but also provides skills workshops, a volunteer-run café, and hosts several clubs including knitting and a book club. It also offers women referred by local services a place to access free clothing. Made in Ashford - a vibrant and popular gift shop which started its life as a pop-up ten years ago. It houses the handmade craftworks of more than 70 artists from across Kent in-store and online. The Coachworks - a trendy, repurposed multi-use space by the train station hosting street food, live music and entertainment events, and workspaces. Going back to the central theme of collaboration, it shows there’s a concerted effort for social entrepreneurs in the area to pool their resources, doing much more for the community, local economy and environment than they could on their own. A spirit of camaraderie which helps deliver a better, holistic service. As a Social Enterprise Place, Ashford proves its status as a hot spot for social impact activity thanks to this ethos. Browsing the crafts at Made in Ashford Rebecca added: “It’s been fantastic having Social Enterprise UK down here to see our work. The theme has really been about collaboration across the board with other social enterprises and charities, the wider business community and our public sector partners. It makes our programmes better, allowing our entrepreneurs to be given the right tools and funding to solve the specific problems they are facing in their local community.” As our flagship data shows, there are more than 131,000 social enterprise businesses in the UK, all working towards benefitting people and planet in their own ways. Imagine the possibilities of replicating the collaborative efforts of the impact community we’ve seen here in Ashford across the whole country? This is why we do what we do, and we’re proud to see it going from strength to strength.

If the government was in any doubt about the challenges facing those starting social enterprises, a mixed group of stakeholders presented it with a vivid picture this week.   It was the most recent evidence delivered to the second roundtable of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on the Social, Cooperative and Community as part of their ongoing inquiry into growing diverse business models.   The highs and lows of social enterprise  Give Your Best (pictured above) was a side hustle that grew into a business for founder Sol Escobar and was supported by ‘tech for good’ grants from organisations such as Innovate UK. Escobar told the inquiry she didn’t know what a social enterprise was as her initiative first began to flourish and described how vital the support ecosystem was.   “I did every single incubator and accelerator I could possibly find, because … I didn't know how to grow this organisation, and they really have just taken me from step to step and taught me how to run this organisation and scale it to become revenue-generating,” Escobar said.  Now 800 to 2000 items of donated clothing are chosen by people in clothing poverty every week through the social enterprise, helping to tackle the £140m worth of clothing that is thrown away annually.   Starting a social enterprise might be an option if you have certain advantages, but what if you don’t? The financial implications for those in this situation were made stark by Bayo Adelaja, founder and CEO of Do it Now Now, which annually supports approximately 150 Black leaders of organisations with business training and grant funding. "Most of the people in our community are earning under £18,000 a year and 27% of them didn't attend university, but they remain pillars of their society and are leaders and changemakers within their community," Adelaja said. "The income they're receiving each year is approximately £32,000 and around 40% of that comes from the salary sacrifice of the directors themselves. The vast majority of them are working full-time jobs and about 40% of them have never received grant funding.”  Adelaja asked the APPG to consider how the government could put in places systems and processes that empower people who don't have the access, schooling or business training of others, but are creating social enterprises in response to communities that need services delivered annually. In particular, she recommended that funding not be project-based, with multi-year funding schemes introduced instead.   “We’ve limped our way through”  Escobar had earlier credited School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) as being instrumental in her development as a business founder. Whilst acknowledging that the “nudge economics” of SSE’s match trading grants and bringing social entrepreneurs together in supportive cohorts to bolster confidence had both worked well, SSE CEO Alistair Wilson was less optimistic about the support ecosystem in general.  "It is interesting to reflect that second-tier support organisations in this country are hanging by a thread. We've limped our way through the last 15 years, and many organisations have gone bust. If the government wants to see this sector thrive, they've got to get behind it in a more serious way," Wilson told the inquiry.  He went on to say that he thought the UK had slipped from being world-leading in social enterprise to “being in tenth place, if you’re lucky” and that he hoped the government would consider how to get the UK’s leading status back. Wilson was backed by Louise Cannon, Director of Social Entrepreneur Support at UnLtd, who also asked that long-term ecosystem building be considered by the government.   Matt Smith, CEO of social investor Key Fund made the point that support organisations like SSE were crucial for equipping passionate social entrepreneurs with the skills and experience to run a business. Like Wilson, he expressed concern at the lack of support organisations that existed now compared to 15 years ago.   Smith also thought that more grant funding could level the playing field in areas of unequal opportunity such as those described earlier in the session by Adelaja. “There's a gap where grants should be playing the role that friends and family would in more affluent communities,” he said.  Fellow social investor Seb Elsworth, CEO of Access called for more mainstream providers to participate in social investment, particularly the state-owned British Business Bank, which manages loan guarantee schemes aimed at SMEs and targets a rate of return of 1.5% for its overall portfolio. “We know most social enterprises are looking for relatively small-scale, flexible, patient, unsecured lending. Providing that kind of finance is difficult to do on a purely commercial basis,” said Elsworth.  Two further evidence-gathering sessions will be conducted before the APPG delivers a report to the government later this year.

GLL has been appointed by City of Lincoln Council as the interim operator for Yarborough and Birchwood Leisure Centres. This follows the immediate closure of both centres after the previous operator ceased trading on 3 April 2025.  GLL will manage the indoor and outdoor facilities at both leisure centres for an interim period of two years, ensuring the rapid restoration of vital leisure services for Lincoln residents. GLL is now working with the council to prepare both centres for reopening this summer.   Chris Hebblewhite, Director of Standards and Compliance at GLL said: "We look forward to working with City of Lincoln Council and the local community to reopen these facilities as quickly and safely as we can to deliver the best possible leisure services at Yarborough and Birchwood Leisure Centres.  "We'll be reaching out to customers this summer providing further details on programmes, memberships and the lessons & courses that will be available through our customer brand BETTER.  "Speaking as someone who was brought up in Lincoln and knows the city's leisure facilities well,  I greatly appreciate their importance to everyone’s health and wellbeing and therefore we are focused on preserving and enhancing that legacy. "Over the course of the next couple of months we’re replacing gym equipment and improving the look and feel of the facilities. There will also be employment opportunities with roles across fitness, customer services, lifeguarding and management." Cllr Naomi Tweddle, Leader of City of Lincoln Council, said:  "We are extremely pleased to confirm the appointment of GLL as our interim operator of these vital leisure centres.   “Their experience and proven capability will be essential in getting both Yarborough and Birchwood Leisure Centres back up and running for the community." GLL and City of Lincoln Council will work together to update residents as progress is made towards reopening both leisure centres.  gll.org

PossAbilities, the vibrant social enterprise on a mission to help people “live the life they choose,” has been officially named one of The Sunday Times Best Places to Work 2025 and they’re absolutely buzzing. The award celebrates outstanding workplaces across the UK, highlighting organisations that lead the way in employee engagement, wellbeing, inclusion, leadership and team spirit. Even more impressively, this was PossAbilities’ first ever year entering the awards and they’ve gone straight into the Big Organisation category with a bang! Unlike traditional awards, this recognition isn’t handed out by a judging panel, it’s earned through honest, anonymous feedback from the people who know the organisation best: its staff. PossAbilities people shared what it’s really like to work there, and the message was clear: this is a workplace full of heart, humour, and purpose. At the core of PossAbilities’ work is a powerful mission of supporting vulnerable people to live independently, connect with others, discover passions and build fulfilling lives . But that commitment doesn’t stop with the people they support it extends to the people doing the supporting too. Professor Donna Hall CBE, Chair of the Board, said: “We are incredibly proud of our talented team and everything they deliver. This recognition is a direct result of their passion, commitment, and the exceptional leadership of our incredible CEO Rachel Law, her team and across PossAbilities. We care deeply about the work we do, and just as much about creating a happy, inclusive, and inspiring workplace where everyone can thrive.” From support workers and coordinators to the back-office wizards who keep everything ticking, PossAbilities is powered by people who bring compassion, creativity and energy to their work every day. And that energy is infectious, shaping a culture that’s supportive, forward-thinking, and fun (yes, fun is allowed at work). This Sunday Times award confirms what PossAbilities already knew: that making a social impact and being a great place to work aren’t mutually exclusive, they’re a perfect match. possabilities.org.uk About PossAbilities PossAbilities are a social care organisation delivering a range of services to adults across the Northwest and West Yorkshire, including supported living, outreach, day services, shared lives, short breaks and an employment service.  We support individuals to live the life they choose.