United Kingdom

In the UK the accepted Government-backed definition of social enterprise used by the UK social enterprise sector bodies such as Social Enterprise UK comes from the 2002 Department for Trade and Industry's 'Social Enterprise: a strategy for success' report as:[23] A business with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose. The original use of the term social enterprise was first developed by Freer Spreckley in 1978, and later included in a publication called Social Audit – A Management Tool for Co-operative Working published in 1981 by Beechwood College. In the original publication the term social enterprise was developed to describe an organisation that uses Social Audit. Freer went on to describe a social enterprise as:[24] An enterprise that is owned by those who work in it and/or reside in a given locality, is governed by registered social as well as commercial aims and objectives and run co-operatively may be termed a social enterprise. Traditionally, 'capital hires labour' with the overriding emphasis on making a 'profit' over and above any benefit either to the business itself or the workforce. Contrasted to this is the social enterprise where 'labour hires capital' with the emphasis on social, environmental and financial benefit. Later on the three areas of social, environmental and financial benefits used for measuring social enterprise became known as the Triple Bottom Line. Twenty years later Freer Spreckley and Cliff Southcombe established the first[25] specialist support organisation in the UK Social Enterprise Partnership Ltd. in March 1997. In the British context, social enterprises include community enterprises, credit unions, trading arms of charities, employee-owned businesses, co-operatives, development trusts, housing associations, social firms, and leisure trusts. Whereas conventional businesses distribute their profit among shareholders, in social enterprises the surplus tends to go towards one or more social aims which the business has – for example education for the poor, vocational training for disabled people, environmental issues or for animal rights. Social enterprises are distinct from charities (although charities are also increasingly looking at ways of maximising income from trading), and from private sector companies with policies on corporate social responsibility. An emerging view, however, is that social enterprise is a particular type of trading activity that sometimes gives rise to distinct organisation forms reflecting a commitment to social cause working with stakeholders from more than one sector of the economy. The first agency in the UK - Social Enterprise London (SEL) - was established in 1998[26] after collaboration between co-operative businesses (Poptel, Computercraft Ltd, Calverts Press, Artzone), a number of co-operative development agencies (CDAs), and infrastructure bodies supporting co-operative enterprise development (Co-operative Training London, Co-operative Party, London ICOM, Co-operatives UK). SEL's first chief executive, Jonathan Bland, brought experience from Valencia where a business support infrastructure for co-operative enterprise was established using learning from the Mondragon region of Spain.[27] SEL did more than provide support to emerging businesses. It created a community of interest by working with the London Development Agency (LDA) to establish both an undergraduate degree in social enterprise at the University of East London (led by Jon Griffith) and a Social Enterprise Journal (now managed by Liverpool John Moores University and published by Emerald Publishing). Allison Ogden-Newton took over from Jonathan Bland as Chief Executive of Social Enterprise London in 2004. Under her leadership the organisation built a network of over 2,000 social enterprises and social entrepreneurs, directly brokered over 500 social enterprise jobs under the DWP's Future Jobs Fund and delivers consultancy and business support across the world in countries including Vietnam, Korea and Croatia. The national membership and campaigning body for the social enterprise movement in Britain is Social Enterprise UK (SEUK) (previously the Social Enterprise Coalition) [6] and this liaises with similar groups in each region of England, as well as in Northern Ireland, Scotland & Wales. SEUK's chief executive, Peter Holbrook, joined in January 2010 from the award winning social enterprise, Sunlight Development Trust, based in Gillingham, Kent. Claire Dove is the Chair of SEUK and runs the social enterprise Blackburne House in Liverpool.

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