AQW 38574/11-15

Ms Claire Sugden
Independent
East Londonderry

Tabled Date: 11/11/2014
Answered On Date: 21/11/2014
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment for her assessment of the effectiveness of local Social Enterprise Hubs in actively encouraging business start ups within local communities.

Answer:

All eleven Social Enterprise Hub locations are now operational and providing physical workspace, training, events, action planning and mentoring to potential new social enterprises across Northern Ireland. Although it is still early days there are reports of significant activity through the Hubs.

At the end of September 2014, the nine delivery contracts reported the following: 102 community engagement sessions had taken place, 59 participants/groups had progressed to Action Planning around a social enterprise business start, 134 mentoring sessions had been completed with groups, and 68 promotional and information events had taken place to encourage social enterprise start up.

In terms of the incubation space utilisation, 15 potential social enterprises were working within the hub premises, and additional 13 groups had been approved to set up a test trading model in the premises - all of these are potential new start social enterprises.

I think this represents a positive start to this innovative project.