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3. City Regions: Should social enterprises be paying attention?

Sarah Longlands of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) looks at the implications of the City Region pilot for social enterprise

City Regions pilots are being developed in Manchester and Leeds and they will bring new powers and hopefully new momentum to the economies of these cities and their wider catchment areas. These governance arrangements are being developed with the aim of delivering greater integration of policy priorities such as regeneration, planning, transport and housing across the city region.

However, how do these changes affect social enterprises in Greater Manchester? Will they notice any difference as a result of the City Regions or will it be business as usual?

At CLES, we’ve been watching this agenda with great interest because not only are we a social enterprise but we are also interested in the governance of economic development. We reckon that although the new City Regions are not going to change the world nor are they going to solve all of the challenges that an area like Manchester faces, there are some potentially important ways in which the change might impact on the City Region’s social entrepreneurs.

The development of the city region is all about consolidating your economic strengths and making the most of the opportunities your area has in terms of its appeal to investors and the availability of quality infrastructure such as housing and transport. The theory is that you can achieve greater efficiencies in service delivery and policy outcomes by working at the larger sub regional scale. For social enterprises in the sub region, this might mean that you too need to start thinking about the geographical scale of your business, particularly if you do a lot of work for the public sector. Traditionally, social enterprises in greater Manchester have played an important role in, amongst other things, helping the public sector to deliver high quality services, particularly in health and education in local communities. Their local knowledge and relationships with communities has enabled them to make an important contribution. The new changes at a sub regional level might mean that there could be greater pressure on your social enterprise to deliver services over a greater area.

If public sector contracts start getting bigger you might find that its useful to start making links and developing relationships with other social enterprises in your area so that if bigger contracts emerge, you are in a good position to put together a consortium bid which combines the expertise and capacity of a number of social enterprises. Many social enterprises already work closely with other like-minded organisations and there are many networks of social enterprise on a local and sub regional basis. Given the move to greater sub regional working, its likely that these networks and relationships within the social enterprise community will continue to grow in importance.

The development and strengthening of the Greater Manchester sub region could also be a real growth opportunity for social enterprise, opening up new markets, new customers and links. As the Manchester sub region grows in importance on a national and international basis, this could mean that social enterprises across the city have greater access to new markets, not only in the sub region, but nationally and even internationally. A further advantage of the growing importance of the sub region is that it may help to attract greater public and private investment, which in turn could support and encourage improvements in infrastructure to fulfill rising demand.

However, a consequence of the city region governance is that we may find that there is less emphasis, and less value, placed on activity and knowledge at the “local” level. However, CLES believe that this would be a mistake. Although there are undoubtedly benefits to come from greater sub regional working, when it comes to delivering support to local communities and knowing your customer base, nothing beats the quality of local knowledge. From CLES’ research, we know that social enterprises play an important role in supporting communities, particularly those who are most deprived, through employment and their supply chain. This investment in localities is a vital part of supporting the resilience of local economies.

Less focus on the ‘local’ could also mean that support for social enterprise could become less locally available. This could include funding to help social enterprises get up and running as well as business advice.

The strengthening of the sub region presents a number of interesting opportunities as well as challenges. However, it is important that as the sub regional debate gathers momentum, our city leaders don’t lose sight of the importance of small scale social enterprises with high quality local knowledge in supporting the resilience of the city region in the future.

More information

The Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA): www.agma.gov.uk/

The Northern Way (North of England economic development partnership) www.thenorthernway.co.uk/page.asp?id=54