What are learning points?
Learning points share what people have learned from their experiences in regeneration - from working or talking together, or from research into issues and evaluation of what is happening. Learning points can help people and organisations to improve their practice through identifying what works and what doesn't.
Where did this learning point come from?
This learning point is developed from an event, held in October 2010, which explored how social enterprises could play a more significant role in town centre regeneration.
The event highlighted some of the issues preventing this from happening and identified some ideas on what could be done to better harness the potential of social enterprises in contributing to innovative approaches to town centres.
The event was hosted by the Scottish Centre for Regeneration's Town Centres and Local High Streets Learning Network, in partnership with the Centre for Scottish Public Policy and the Small Towns Task Group.
A detailed briefing paper describes some of the wider issues facing town centres. Here we outline some of these in more detail and highlight others.
Creating the right space and framework to support social enterprises
What are the issues?
- The Public Sector often dominates the delivery of a wide range of services and functions within town centres, this can result in social enterprise entrepreneurship being restricted at times. Local authorities 'command and control' functions can stop social enterprise development at an early stage and this is something that has to be tackled.
- It's not clear how 'Big Society' will work locally and what role social enterprises might play in delivering this. Equally, local authorities will be cutting back on a range of services and it is currently unclear how communities who don't have active resident involvement will continue to function without these services. Who, if anyone, will fill the gaps?
What have we learned?
- In looking at issues around service delivery, local authorities and their Community Planning partners should consider whether a social enterprise can play a part in tackling that issue, especially when local authority funding cuts mean that they can no longer deliver that service or function for the community. This may become even more important over the next 5 years when resources are very tight. However, for it to succeed, there needs to be strategic intent by local authorities to act on any new and creative service delivery ideas.
- National Government should require a formal commitment by public bodies to consider social enterprise options in reviewing and tackling issues arising from public sector cutbacks. There should also be better internal communication and collaborative working across the Scottish Government on these issues. Alongside this, national audit and performance review frameworks should shift their focus to more enabling type activities. Also, the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator could better incorporate social enterprise interests in its activities.
- The focus and culture of public bodies needs to shift towards local communities. In particular, Single Outcome Agreements need to reflect and stem from local issues and not from town down organisational needs and interests.
- For town centres, there is a need to convince elected members of the power of 'place based' working, rather than just thinking about agencies joining up their provision of services.
- Both social enterprises and local authorities need 'enablers' - champions who can provide support and guidance , as well as help facilitate between agencies.
Bringing social enterprises into the regeneration equation for town centres
What are the issues?
- There are a range of town centre functions and services that are currently delivered by local authorities, which could be delivered by social enterprises. Where 'Town Teams' exist, social enterprises need to become participants in these, rather than representing interests to be consulted.
- Social enterprises compete for space and they face many barriers: competition for scarce resources, onerous health, safety and other regulations and start-up costs. Other barriers exist in relation to mistrust (from agencies and local communities) and different vested interests protecting their power base in town centres.
What have we learned?
- We need to revision and rethink towns in terms of the wider community they serve and the markets they operate in. We need to think beyond retail.
- Place based managed approaches in town centres offer good opportunities to devolve services to social enterprises in town centres.
- Social Enterprises have a central role to play beyond filling empty shops. They should be key organisations providing a range of services and support in our town centres and should not be thought of only as 'the charity shops' that are there to fill empty units until a better offering comes along.
- There has to be a shared recognition of diversity within our town centres. They don't always 'fit into one box'. Current structures and systems in place at a local and national level need to avoid creating clone towns, social enterprises allow for a variety of local services and functions to be brought into a town centre, therefore help to create a 'uniqueness'.
Redesigning services to help grow social enterprises and community assets
What are the issues?
- More support is needed to encourage networking amongst social enterprises, particularly in procurement, and to identify and harness the energy in communities which can support this. Social enterprises themselves need to work together to share information and good practice, for example, doing more 'buddying up' to help new start-ups and exploring opportunities for trading within the sector.
- The role of social enterprises as a delivery partner needs to be given greater consideration by those who design services. Also, looking beyond the usual approaches, communities and service users need to be fully involved in the design process.
What have we learned?
- Decision making by public bodies should have much more local emphasis and seek to shift the focus more towards local communities. This may involve different types and levels of community enterprises, depending upon the local context.
Collaboration amongst public bodies, the private sector and social enterprises
What are the issues?
- Social enterprises need to understand better how local authorities work and how both organisations can work together for the benefit of the communities they serve.
- Social enterprises should be playing a key role in the transfer of local authority assets. They need to be geared up on the process and then have the ability to turn such assets into revenue streams.
- Due to the current economic situation, local authorities are having to quickly cut funding and budgets for services, meaning that many social enterprises might not be able to move quickly enough to fill the gaps.
- Grants being cut may mean that social enterprises have to competitively tender for work and develop contractual type relations - many of these skills are lacking within social enterprises and there is often a dependency on a grant relationship.
- There is no longer local flexibility for bank managers to allow flexible funding to new social enterprises. So much social enterprise activity has a local focus but this is the opposite of large banks, who centralise their activity and very often do not have awareness and understanding of the local context.
What have we learned?
- Key attributes needed in both public bodies and social enterprises are: leadership and vision, collaboration, thinking beyond traditional boundaries and being innovative and prepared to take risks. These need to be backed up by building capacity, trust and for people involved to be passionate about what they are trying to achieve.
- Modernisation of the voluntary sector is needed, alongside a shift by the public sector towards greater support for social enterprises.
- Social enterprises have to define their own territory and need to use the current period of uncertainty to define their roles and functions within town centres.
- There is no one model for social enterprises - and there shouldn't be! For example, Housing Associations are potentially much bigger players in town centre regeneration with their assets.
- It is not just about thinking up new solutions and then creating new social enterprises - existing businesses, for example a family business that has been in operation for many years but is now facing succession issues, could be converted into a social enterprise.
Further information
- The Town Centres and Local High Streets learning network website provides a range of information and resources in relation to town centre regeneration.
- Copies of presentations delivered during the event are available from the Learning Network website, along with two briefing papers used as discussion tools on the day.
Scottish Government Third Sector Division
From spring 2011 we will take a more strategic approach to our investment in the third sector with the aim of increasing the resilience and capacity of third sector organisations.
- We have been able to increase the core third sector budget by 16% reflecting the importance of the sector in to the success of Scotland.
- In addition, the Scottish Investment Fund, which was due to end in March 2011 will now continue for a further year with £3 million - taking total investment in the fund to £31.8 million beyond our original commitment of £30 million.
- The core third sector budget will be increased by £3.3 million in 2011-12.
- The extra funding supports the important role that the third sector has to play in public service delivery and redesign through a range of measures.
We will enhance our strategic engagement with the sector at a national level and support strategic engagement with community planning through third sector interfaces in each Community Planning Partnership area.
We will deliver a range of business support to third sector organisations via strategic contracts with the aim of increasing organisational capacity and capability. A key objective of the new contracts is to simplify the existing support landscape by providing a single point for individual organisations to access the help they need to ensure that they grow in financial resilience and sustainability.
Further information on our priorities will be published on our website.
Scottish Centre for Regeneration
This document is published by the Scottish Centre for Regeneration, which is part of the Scottish Government. We support our public, private and voluntary sector delivery partners to become more effective at:
- regenerating communities and tackling poverty
- developing more successful town centres and local high streets
- creating and managing mixed and sustainable communities
- making housing more energy efficient
- managing housing more efficiently and effectively
We do this through:
- coordinating learning networks which bring people together to identify the challenges they face and to support them to tackle these through events, networking and capacity building programmes
- identifying and sharing innovation and practice through publishing documents detailing examples of projects and programmes and highlighting lessons learned
- developing partnerships with key players in the housing and regeneration sector to ensure that our activities meet their needs and support their work.
Scottish Centre for Regeneration
Scottish Government
Highlander House
58 Waterloo Street
Glasgow
G2 7DA
Tel: 0141 271 3734
Email: contactscr@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
Website: www.partnersinregeneration.com
The views expressed in learning points are those of participants at various events and are not necessarily shared by their employers, the Scottish Centre for Regeneration or the Scottish Government.
January 2011