Written question asked by Margaret Moran (Labour) on Thursday, 28 January 2010, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 1 February 2010. It was answered by Baroness Winterton of Doncaster (Labour) on Tuesday, 16 March 2010 on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

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Question: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills how many social enterprises were (a) established in and (b) assisted by each regional development agency in each of the last five years.

Answer

RDAs recognise the value that social enterprises (SEs) bring as businesses providing significant economic benefits to regions whilst delivering social benefits and/or enhancing the environment.RDAs have various investment routes for supporting SEs, including funding through the social enterprise networks, direct investment into SEs, provision of social enterprise grants/voucher schemes, and development of mentoring schemes. From 2007/08, the Office of the Third Sector (OTS) has funded a four year programme to enable each of the nine RDAs to develop SE support across the country.In addition, RDAs also deliver support for start-up and existing SEs through the Business Link service and regional Solutions for Business products, which are open and accessible to all businesses. As such, it is not always possible to differentiate between the start up and support of SEs from that of other businesses. Only projects that directly support or invest in SEs are reflected in the following data. In addition, it is not always possible for RDAs to disaggregate between SE start-ups and other SE support.The RDAs are only able to provide data on the number of social enterprises established over the past five years that have had direct contact with the RDAs.

RDA	Year	Total number of social enterprises established	Total number of social enterprises assisted
AWM¹	2004-05	—	5
	2005-06	—	14
	2006-07	—	9
	2007-08	—	640
	2008-09	—	540

EEDA²	2004-05	—	107
	2005-06	—	114
	2006-07	—	119
	2007-08	—	215
	2008-09	—	330

EMDA³	2004-05	—	—
	2005-06	7	407
	2006-07	1	1,045
	2007-08	31	523
	2008-09	83	1,038


LDA4	2004-05	—	—
	2005-06	—	—
	2006-07	—	—
	2007-08	—	498
	2008-09	—	1,980

NWDA5	2004-05	134	—
	2005-06	54	—
	2006-07	60	—
	2007-08	57	108
	2008-09	49	610

ONE6	2004-05	4	10
	2005-06	3	0
	2006-07	8	72
	2007-08	69	561
	2008-09	181	488

SEEDA7	2004-05	—	—
	2005-06	—	—
	2006-07	—	—
	2007-08	5	214
	2008-09	322	1,370

SWRDA8	2004-05	—	1
	2005-06	—	1
	2006-07	—	1
	2007-08	52	950
	2008-09	44	1,095

YF9	2004-05	66	143
	2005-06	57	180
	2006-07	48	554
	2007-08	12	617
	2008-09	110	1,221
¹ AWM: The figures are conservative estimates as data prior to 2007/08 do not include Business Link (BL) activity. Neither BL nor Social Enterprise West Midlands collected the requested data prior to April 2007.
² EEDA: EEDA is unable to disaggregate between 'established' and 'start-up' businesses. As such, the data provided refer to the total number of SEs assisted over the past five years.
³ EMDA: Data are unavailable for 2004/05 as this is prior to the introduction of the nationally agreed Tasking Framework.
4 LDA: Where figures are unavailable this is because there was no funding directly attributable to supporting the social enterprise sector. However, there may have been funding for the sector in these years within mainstream LDA programmes which cannot be disaggregated.
5 NWDA: Prior to 2007/08, the number of social enterprises assisted was not recorded separately on the tasking framework. Data provided for 2007/08 and 2008/09 are the combined outputs of NWDA and Business Link NW. BL NW was established in April 2007.
6 ONE: Figures prior to 2007/08 do not include BL services and therefore do not reflect the true figure of total number of SEs established and/or assisted. ONE is unable to provide BL figures prior to 2007/08 when their current provider began delivering the project.
7 SEEDA: Business Link was not managed by SEEDA in 2004/05, and although SEEDA did manage BL in 2005/06 and 2006/07 the data required was not recorded. The new BL contract came into force on 1 April 2007 and from then reporting requirements changed.
8 SWRDA: The South West RDA supports the regional social enterprise network, and the numbers recorded relate to the regional social enterprise network and to the support provided through BL providers. The South West RDA does not collect data on individual social enterprises supported. Contracts with our current BL providers started in 2007, so data for BL assisted businesses is not available before this.
9 YF: Figures provided before 2008/09 do not include beneficiary data from BL as this predates the current BL provider. The figures provided for 2008/09 have not compared beneficiary data collected by BL and YF separately as this would incur disproportionate cost.

Secondary information

Type: Written question
Reference: 507 c845-7W; 314861
Session: 2009-10
Subjects: Social enterprises
Contains statistics: Yes
Link: View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk

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Secondary information

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