UK: tackling rural social exclusion

An innovative action research programme aimed at social enterprises and voluntary organisations in rural areas of England has supported 100 community enterprise activities since it was launched in 2005. The £1.6m Enterprise for Inclusion programme, financed by the Department of Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), aims to provide support to social enterprises and voluntary organisations which plan to commence or develop enterprise-based activities to the benefit of socially excluded people in English rural communities. Defra believes that enterprise-based approaches can be an effective way by which community groups can help themselves to achieve their social aims and, in doing so, contribute towards social inclusion in rural England. Enterprise for Inclusion offers the opportunity to test this approach in a systematic way to inform public policy-makers on the development of future support programmes. The programme is run by a consortium of rural and social enterprise support organisations, headed by the Plunkett Foundation, ACRE and Co-operatives UK. The programme has been operating in four English regions: the North West, the North East, the East Midlands and the South West. It has provided 100 packages of support to new or developing social and community enterprise activities in the form of small grants and specialist advisory support. The size of the support packages have varied according to the scale and complexity of the projects, ranging from 5 to 30 days of specialist advice from an experienced adviser and a grant towards the start-up costs of the activity of between £2,000 and £12,000. All the money has been allocated and no further applications are being accepted. Enterprise for Inclusion aims to make a major contribution to rural social enterprise support policy at a time when regional development agencies are assuming control of rural development and enterprise support policy. In this way, the programme is intended to leave behind a legacy much greater than the individual projects which it supports and to play its part in reshaping rural England. The findings from the action research programme will be announced later this year. www.plunkett.co.uk www.plunkett.co.uk