The London Social Economy Taskforce was a consortium of organisations representing London’s vibrant social enterprise community. Serving a strategic function, members contribute their expertise to a visionary approach in addressing barriers facing social enterprises and creating positive and innovative ways to grow the social enterprise movement in the Capital.
The Taskforce was set up in 2001 as a forum where key London players could come together to address barriers facing social enterprises in the Capital and create solutions to these barriers. It sought to ensure that the sector received the right support and assistance in order to develop, thus enabling social enterprises to deliver solutions to key economic, environmental and social issues affecting London.
The Taskforce received support from the London Development Agency and was serviced by Social Enterprise London (SEL). The Taskforce was firstly chaired by Allison Ogden-Newton (Chief Executive, SEL), who was then replaced by Iain Tuckett, Executive Director of Coin Street Community Builders.
In November 2002 the Taskforce published ‘Time to Deliver - a social enterprise business support strategy for London’. In this document, the need to have a co-ordinated approach to providing appropriate support ‘on the ground’ for those involved in starting up, or expanding existing, social enterprises was seen as the most pressing “challenge”. The Taskforce worked to implement the actions involving all appropriate stakeholders and monitored progress and regularly update the action programme.
By the end of 2004, the London Development Agency (LDA) and SEL had agreed a programme of work which included both a greater focus on growing a network of London social enterprises and more proactive support for a new Taskforce. This ‘new’ Taskforce with its expanded membership first met in February 2005 and continued to meet twice a year. In addition to the full Taskforce, working groups were formed to look into specific issues faced by social enterprise. Membership of the working groups was not necessarily the same as the Taskforce as the group was encouraged to engage with specialists in the field.
The working groups were:
Business Support & Training Group which brought together the organisations that provide business support to social enterprise, identified the support needs of social enterprises, and worked to improve the coordination and delivery of business support to social enterprises specifically and the wider not for profit sector more generally. The group also conducted a small project to understand the diversity of social enterprise specific business support across London. The group was chaired by Iain Tuckett (Coin Street Community Builders). The group responded to the LDA’s Business Support consultation, and the group’s input can be downloaded here.
Health & Social Care Group which looked into issues affecting social enterprises in the health and social care sector, and identified areas where social enterprises could make a positive contribution to the delivery of health and social care services. The group was chaired by Dr Ashish Dwivedi (CEO, SELDOC). The group produced two papers, the first looked into issues affecting social enterprise in health and social care, and the other attempted to show who is demanding social enterprise involvement in health and social care.
Property and Community Asset Group discussed and raised issues related to increasing the ownership of property and assets within the community, including issues such as cost of land, transfer of land and assets by local authorities, legal and financial difficulties in relation to asset management and models for acquiring and using assets effectively. The Group was firstly chaired by Robin Jones (Development Trust Association) and then by Lorraine Hart (The Environment Trust). The group conducted a property and community asset survey to understand the needs of social enterprises and the outcome can be downloaded here. This group has now become a part of the Change Up Premises Group that is being lead by the DTA.
Procurement Group looked into making procurement policies more open to social enterprises. The Group was chaired by Martin Rowley (Government Office for London). This group later became a part of the health and social care group.
Social Enterprise London commissioned an evaluation of the Taskforce’s roles and performance before the end of the Taskforce's operations. Finally, in March of 2007 the taskforce came to a close.
