Fife Social Enterprise Event

Fife Policy Breakfast 23^rd August 2012
Ore Valley Business Centre, 93 Main Street, Lochgelly

Its always great to meet up and chat with other social entrepreneurs and hear how things are going for them in these challangeing financial times.

Here are just some of the things discussed at the event.

Fraser Kelly, CEO of Social Enterprise Scotland gave an overview of some of the key policy areas currently facing social enterprises.  These include:

·         Welfare reform

·         Self directed support

·         Employability

·         Local authority procurement

·         Capacity building / scalability

 

One thing which did raise very real concerns for me was this:

Local authority procurement

Cllr David Ross raised that Fife Council have a £50m funding gap for providing services and they are looking to social enterprise as a solution.  Various questions and comments ensued including:

·         Do Fife Council see social enterprise as a cheap option or do they see it as a cost effective alternative? If so, are they prepared to invest in social enterprise?

o   Fife Council confess that they are looking to social enterprise as a necessity but also feel it will create opportunities.

o   Fife council have recently cut some contracts with social enterprises, including My Bus shopping service.

·         Social enterprise still feels excluded from procurement opportunities as normally it cannot compete with bids from large private sector firms who have better resources and expertise in completing tender processes. 

o   Could councils include a ‘local supplier’ clause to weight in favour of local organisations bidding?

o   Community benefit clauses should be included.

o   Do social enterprises highlight their social benefits enough? Probably not.

·         Capacity to deliver local authority contracts is often a problem for social enterprises.

o   There are plenty social enterprises who can and do deliver, such as Recycle Fife.

o   Partnerships could be considered by local social enterprises in order to deliver a large contract.

o   Small private forms face the same capacity problems.

 

This may be the source of opportunities for social enterprises provided we can compete with the private sector. If social enterprise cannot we might be in trouble.