Don’t start building Big Society without us, sector warns government

The government must work closely with social enterprise experts to realise its vision of the Big Society, leaders of the movement said today.

In exclusive comments for Social Enterprise, sector leaders welcomed the government’s commitment to putting social enterprise at the heart of public service reform following yesterday’s Big Society policy announcement.

However, Ed Mayo of Co-operatives UK, Peter Holbrook of the Social Enterprise Coalition and Richard Kemp of the Local Government Association (LGA) said the key to successful reform is engagement with the sector.

Mayo, secretary general of Co-operatives UK, said there were ‘risks’ in a co-operative approach without support and knowledge.

‘What we can offer is the essential expertise and experience of co-operative, mutual and employee ownership models to help the new government’s shared policy on public services succeed,’ he said.

‘We firmly believe that this knowledge is invaluable, as many of the concepts and structures which underpin the models are unfamiliar to those used to working with more traditional models, and there are real risks in embarking on change in this direction without the benefit of practical experience and specialist expertise.’

Coalition CEO Holbrook said he was pleased to hear the first indication of the Big Society theory turning into action, but warned it would be a challenge that needed the sector’s support.

‘The complexity of delivering these proposals will be a challenge and the new government must engage with the social enterprise movement to ensure that their vision can be realised,’ he said.

‘The Social Enterprise Coalition is ready and willing to work with thenew government so that our knowledge and expertise can help them achieve their overarching ambition of achieving greater social justice.’

Kemp, co-deputy chair of the LGA, welcomed the Big Society’s devolved power to local authorities and said councils, the third sector and social enterprises must work together to ‘respond to this initiative’.

‘If we try and go it alone we will not achieve what either we or the government wants. If we work together we can establish new relationships between us, which will drive vastly improved and more responsive services for local people even at a time of massive financial constraint,’ he said.

‘The freeing up of finance is the only way to achieve efficiency, but it creates challenges as well as solutions for us. We will have to ensure that we are skilled enough to take on an enhanced community leadership role and brave enough to give power and responsibility to partners as the government gives power and responsibility to us.’

Bubb, chair of the Social Investment Business, said he was delighted to hear a concrete policy announcement on the Big Society Bank. He believed government has agreed to allocating it all dormant bank account cash.

‘The fact that the PM and deputy announced this is important as it means it will happen. And what is crucial is that they will use all the dormant account money for this,’ he said.

‘I was always deeply critical of Labour for only coming up with £75m which was clearly a drop in the ocean of need.’

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