Social enterprise - Driving a Wellbeing Economy for Scotland: action plan 2024-2026

Foreword

In the dynamic landscape of Scotland’s social enterprises, recent years have presented a tapestry of innovation and evident challenges.

The Social Enterprise Action Plan 2024- 2026 emerges at a pivotal moment, acknowledging the sector’s resilience and adaptability amidst economic pressures and societal shifts. Public sector budgets across the board are constrained, there is higher competition for funding and investment, the cost-of-living crisis is reducing customer spend and increasing operating costs.

The social enterprise sector’s response to this has seen a growth in enterprises that are more nimble and collaborative than ever before. Across the country new social enterprises are being established in response to local market failure or to support the communities within which they live, creating businesses, securing jobs and delivering services. These new businesses are working across different sectors, responding to the challenges of climate change, the complex demand for social care and tackling child poverty.

As well as the growth of innovation, challenging conditions have required a more effective crisis management approach that has brought support agencies and the wider eco-system together to ensure we can protect our front-line services in challenging times.

A period of sector-led thinking and consultation across the country led to the 2014 Vision for Social Enterprise which aligned with the Scottish Government’s ambitions for Scotland’s economy. This resulted in an authentic period of co- production that led to the important 10-year Social Enterprise Strategy 2016-2026.

The first Action Plan 2017-2020, setting out how we would deliver the ambitions in the strategy, was broad and had 92 actions. The second Action Plan sought to reflect the challenges and solutions developed in response to the global pandemic. This third Plan has a much reduced 17 actions that underpin an ambition to strengthen and improve the wider eco-system.

The 2014 vision stated: ‘Over the next decade we will see social enterprise at the vanguard of a new wave of ethical and socially responsible business in Scotland. It will make its breakthrough as part of a more diverse and vibrant economy, helping to balance economic growth with the protection of public services, the continuing fight against poverty and the promotion of equality. It will become central to the ‘Scottish approach’’ to doing business. With the National Strategy for Economic Transformation^[1] and the move to the DG Economy portfolio of the Scottish Government demonstrating a broader commitment to Inclusive and Democratic Business Models, it feels that this vision is being achieved.

It is exciting to see this not only as the next Action Plan but as the foundation of the vision of a new strategy that will make Scotland’s transition to a Wellbeing Economy a global example.

Douglas Westwater

CEO Community Enterprise November 2024