Claire Dove: Driving social enterprise

Claire Dove picked up a Lifetime Achievement Award in the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion this week. Chief executive of social enterprise Blackburne House and chair of the Social Enterprise Coalition, she spoke to New Start about standing up to injustice and driving social enterprise to the next level.

How did you start out?

Most people go into the social enterprise or charity sector because of an experience they had. For me it was because of the racism I experienced when I was young. There was very overt racism back in the 70s in Liverpool. I couldn’t get a job. You either shrink and go away or decide it’s not acceptable. It’s part of my personality that I wouldn’t allow people to put me down and my working life has been spent on social justice. I set up an employment agency to work with employers. We said we’ll work with the best candidate with the best skillset rather than judge people on their gender or race. I’d worked with the women’s movement in the early 60s/70s and wanted to do something specifically around women and was asked to work with a group looking at setting up training provision for women. At that time there wasn’t a lot of supportive training for women, especially for those that had been failed by the traditional education sector and for black women. Our organisation – the Women’s Training and Technology Scheme – was about getting women into careers not jobs, training them to a high level. We thought technology might be a growth industry and started a very bold course thirty years ago training women in new technology – microelectronics, computing and electronics – and we were very successful. What we looked at doing was not just putting a course on but basing it around the needs of women. We got more women than we had space for, grew exponentially and didn’t have enough space.

You’ve moved to Blackburne House 30 years ago, an iconic building in Liverpool city centre, and your organisation has a social enterprise model

It was home to John Blackburne, mayor of Liverpool and a slaver. It was then taken over by George Holt who owned lots of the city and believed that girls have a right to education. He opened this as the first girls’ school in the country. Dickens also spoke here about girls’ right to education. The building closed down in the 80s and we took it over in the 90s and refurbished it. We spent £4m, which was a lot of money then but we wanted a top spec building. I didn’t want women who live on rundown housing estates to come into an environment that’s equally poor. This is about aspiration. We now offer 1000 full and part time education places for women.

It was then that the social enterprise side started. We didn’t want the building to be a drain on revenue. The focal point needed to be the education and training of women. So we set up a series of businesses that would earn their own way and keep the business going and any profits would go into the education and training. That was before people talked about social enterprise. We have a health spa, a cafe, a conference and events business, a nursery and a maintenance business and a design business. That was about making this building work so that we didn’t lose the core aim.

You now chair Social Enterprise UK and have helped drive social enterprise into the mainstream. What was the key challenge for the sector?

My concern in the early days was that the social enterprise sector shouldn’t mirror the traditional business sector but be more inclusive, so that people who thought running a business is not for them would think differently. I looked first at a strategy for black and minority ethnic people for the Social Enterprise Coalition to make sure we were supporting those who wanted to come into sector. When I took over as chair of the coalition [now Social Enterprise UK] social enterprise needed to go on to next platform and it was about driving the sector. You could see the absolute impact that business trading for social justice could do not only for economy but also for communities. I looked at governance, appointed the new chief executive and we put in place a new strategy. I’ve been chair for six years and what I’ve seen is growth in the sector. It’s used in the vernacular in business, it’s in the budget, and in the queen’s speech. Most satisfying is in State of Social Enterprise surveys the high number of black women and young people who all see social enterprise as something they want to lead or work in. They want to do something more than just earn money for a board. That was the change I wanted to see that social enterprise could make.

Now that social enterprise is in the mainstream is your work done?

You get a lifetime achievement and think “this is me on the way out”. I wish I could end my working days saying “it’s all sorted”. We’ve seen thousands of women get really good careers and start their businesses. But with the cuts we’re seeing now there are still some major issues and the conditions we are in are unique. I’ve never known things to be so bad.

We’re supporting more women now with the basics. People are desperate, worried, and frightened because of benefit cuts and the bedroom tax. So many things that are much more worrying especially to women and women have been impacted on more than most in austerity. The city is working very hard – we’ve set up a Fairness Commission which I chair which is about making the right decisions to be just and fair within the city.

Some social enterprises are struggling and the issue is around cash flow and loans and investment. Traditional banks will not loan to anyone so are in the same position as other SMEs in that it’s difficult to get that support. Until we can square relief for social enterprises it will be treading water for a few years. This is where Big Society Capital and more investment agencies are needed to support the sector. Government has done a bit – there is a consultation on tax – but until we get something concrete then organisations will be at the mercy of the finance industry.

What needs to happen for social enterprise to expand even further?

I think nationally more should be done for social enterprises and the work we do should be taken into account. We are not just trading. We are absolutely helping people become more employable in our communities. Social enterprises are usually working in communities that are disadvantaged. That should be taken into consideration. It further impedes our communities to get out of poverty when a social enterprise [like Create in Leeds] gets into financial difficulties.

If the Skills Funding Agency for example could open up more to organisations like Create so that they have their own contracts, their own consortia and their own primes to give a decent wage to train people that would be a better situation. If you are training people you are giving them a qualification to make them employable but contracts often don’t cover the cost of training. Government is not going to go into a lot of small contracts so as a sector we should look at holding major contracts ourselves, working on joint ventures together, something that will support a sector providing top level skills.

We’ve been looking at tax breaks that support investment in social enterprise. And how the social value act can be integrated in mainstream contracts with central government and then out to local authorities. Social Enterprise UK helped get the social value act to parliament and Liverpool is adopting it as part of it procurement strategy. We have a task force that’s set up looking at procurement and how we embed the social value around every pound that’s spent.

It’s about a level playing field for social enterprises to grow and flourish in this country and what we can do to support government’s aims. We are there as a solution but there has to be investment and support in order for us to do that.

There’s a focus on measurement and payment by results. Different organisations will measure in different ways. When Ofsted came to evaluate us we had all the statistics on equality but when they came through the doors they said they got a sense of how profound it was, how equality is embedded into everything we do.

How has regeneration helped Liverpool?

In Liverpool in the 80s there were militant tendencies in the council and lots of businesses ran away from the city. Lots of people got on the train and went to London but women were not transient, they had families and couldn’t go anywhere. We’ve worked with the local authority on the regeneration of Liverpool and on upping the skills levels of women and perceptions about the city have changed. We had to demonstrate to inward investment that employers could recruit from a skilled community. Those women spend in the local economy and so increasing their skills levels creates a wonderful cycle of investment.

One of best things about this city is people sitting down together to talk through problems. It’s not a siloed approach but fluid and for over 30 years my organisation has been at the table and looking at impact of women in the city and transferring that across the country.

What’s next?

I’m not hanging up my hat. I’m at retirement age but will hopefully do other things and great people will carry on with this. And I’ll shout loudly for women and for social justice as I always have.