In a ground breaking energy project, there will be energy surgeries in the library, energy gadget give-aways, and a bespoke free insulation scheme co-ordinated by MEA. Shropshire Insulations will be surveying properties in the village in the coming months and have been challenged to install insulation in as many as possible for free. MEA are also seeking to assess and insulate a number of solid wall properties in the village.

Residents will shortly get an Energy Newsletter outlining the wide range of events going on in the village over the coming months. As well as helping out domestic properties, MEA will also be auditing the community and public buildings, with funds to undertake some energy efficiency measures for each of the eight it surveys. There will be three business breakfasts covering future business prospects that the renewable technology and energy efficiency sectors can offer with free bacon butties for all.

Richard Davies MBE, Director of MEA said “This is a fantastic opportunity for residents of Bayston Hill to take advantage of the insulation and offers that are available. They may not be around for long and we’ve negotiated a fantastic insulation deal for the village. We’re throwing all our might behind this project to get Bayston Hill’s energy use down and their bills in check.”

James Moraghen, Chairman, Bayston Hill Parish Council said “We are excited to work with Marches Energy Agency (MEA) whom we have commissioned to manage this project. Currently there is funding available from the government to support people who want to increase the energy efficiency of their home through these measures. This scheme will soon come to an end. Bayston Hill Parish Council is keen that residents of the parish get to know how they can reduce their energy bills before the money disappears!

*The Marches Energy Agency is a social enterprise and an independent charity and nationally recognised organisation with a remit to disseminate information regarding climate change, energy efficiency and renewable energy. It is involved in projects as diverse as steering local, regional and national policy, assisting community groups, managing energy efficiency projects and assisting with the installation of renewable technologies.

The £35,000 project is looking to put libraries at the heart of arts and culture in the area and help coordinate events and performances as well as film seasons which will bring directors and other film makers to talk to audiences.

Fresh Horizons Managing Director, Mike McCusker, said “We are thrilled to be the only social enterprise selected to deliver a programme through the Libraries Development Initiative. With only 13 projects being funded and over 100 applications, in the main from Councils from across England, we knew the competition would be fierce.”

The innovative project is also being supported by Kirklees Council and the Deighton and Brackenhall Initiative and hopes to link up with the great work being done by cultural groups like the Lawrence Batley Theatre and Open Art.

Cluny Macpherson, Regional Director, Arts Council England said: “Fresh Horizon’s project is exactly what we wanted to see from the Libraries Development Fund – an enterprising approach that both cements the value of local libraries and reveals new ways for all parts of the community to get involved in arts and culture. This project will be owned and managed locally, and through training opportunities – including the screening of people’s own films – will help celebrate creative talent.”

See more from the Arts Council press office.

About Fresh Horizons
Fresh Horizons, situated in Deighton, is a growing social enterprise certified with the Social Enterprise Mark, employing over 50 people, that helps people in areas of deprivation feel proud of what they do and where they live.

By engaging local people, with local knowledge, to solve local problems Fresh Horizons provides opportunities for learning, development and employment; engages people in community life through managing facilities and local events; and improves the quality and safety of community assets. As a social enterprise surpluses are re-invested into services that benefit the community. And as it grows Fresh Horizons creates more jobs, develops more community assets and helps more people improve their lives.

Fresh Horizons is a member of Locality.

For more information contact Mike McCusker on 07515 993183

Therm Tech director Lionel Macey (left) with Workspace chief executive Brian Murray after sealing the deal.

Based in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, Therm Tech manufacture state-of-the art energy saving solutions for a range of commercial and industrial uses. These include the provision of heat recovery and recycling systems through to industrial super-sized heaters and activated carbon technology.

A provider of enterprise units, business support programmes, recruitment services and employability initiatives, Workspace already owns Northern Ireland’s largest home insulation provider Homeseal and energy efficient lighting firm Environment 2000. Last year, it pledged to almost double its annual sales from £7.6 million in 2010 to £14 million in the next four years.

Launching its four-year plan in November last year, the Draperstown-based group said it was seeking to raise its game locally, nationally and internationally with an increasing focus on growing sales through both organic growth and business acquisition.

Workspace Chief Executive Brian Murray said the decision to acquire Therm Tech was a relatively straightforward decision:

“Therm Tech Limited is an already well-established business with an established customer base, a strong focus on its customers’ needs and an excellent reputation. This acquisition is a perfect fit for our growth strategy as it extends our capabilities and expertise in energy efficiency.

“Finding the right acquisition to complement our existing business has been a top priority for us and we’re delighted that this deal marks a significant milestone for further growth in 2012.”

Workspace Group chairman, Michael McAllister, added:

“We’re really delighted to welcome Therm Tech and its hard-working team to The Workspace Group of companies. I believe that by leveraging our combined strengths to focus on emerging market opportunities, we will all be in a better position to make great headway in the years ahead, as we expand our offering and lock in growth for the future.”

Set up to stimulate social and economic regeneration in the Magherafelt area, The Workspace Group employs 117 people at five locations in Mid-Ulster, as well as from offices in Donegal and Wales. Its green energy subsidiary, Environment 2000, was recently awarded a contract to retrofit its energy efficient lighting system on part of Glasgow’s underground system.

The Workspace Group’s four-year strategic plan aims to boost business through both organic growth and business acquisition. It also includes plans for the establishment of a new flagship social enterprise and a £1m Energy Services investment fund.

The group is also working to establish Workspace as a ‘Green’ enterprise centre for businesses involved in saving energy as well as making the local area energy positive overall.

Profits generated from all of Workspace’s business ventures are used to partly or wholly fund non-commercial social projects.

The Toolbox offers guidance and tools to help you set up and run your social enterprise.

Download the Social Enterprise ToolBox E-Book here
Download the Social Enterprise ToolBox i-phone Mobile App here

The guide is written for a business leader at any stage of running their social enterprise as its intention is to help you undertake a considered and structured analysis of how well you are planning and managing your business.

Striding Out specialises in using coaching tools and techniques to help a client progress their own business. The guide therefore provides guidance, inspiration, thoughtful questions and interactive tools to help you plan and shape your business strategy for now and in the future.

The guide covers the following topics:
• Communicating Your Business
• Customers, Products & Services
• Market Research, Marketing & Sales
• Leadership and Management
• Measuring Your Impact
• Developing Your Team
• Business Formalities
• Business Growth
• Financial Planning and Raising Investment

As you work through each of the sections you will start to prepare all of the information you need ready for your annual business strategy, business plan, funding applications, internal team manual and even client proposals.

For a touch of inspiration, from February 2012, we will also be adding audio’s with leading social entrepreneurs, who will share their story and top tips, with a new audio release added each month!
The Social Enterprise Toolbox is written by Heather Wilkinson, a specialist consultant and coach in social enterprise.

If you would like further information, then please contact heather@stridingout.co.uk or call 0203 303 0468

Brian Strevens, Founder of SCA Group

The post was originally created to assist the handover to SCA’s new Chief Executive, Maria Mills during the initial stages of her employment with SCA in August 2010. Mr Strevens remained in the post to assist SCA Trafalgar dental services and to further develop consultancy services within the SCA Group. To avoid any conflicts of interest, Mr Strevens will retire as a Member of the Societies which compose the SCA Group, which he founded in 1991.

SCA CEO Maria Mills said everyone at SCA would like to thank Brian for all his hard work, innovation and support over the last 20 years.

“I have been privileged to receive such a comprehensive handover and for SCA to have had access to Brian’s immense skills on an on-going basis to support specific areas of our work over the last year. Brian built up an impressive organisation and I am honoured to follow in his footsteps. We wish him every success with all of his future projects and business ventures.”

Mr Strevens will remain busy in his retirement, pursuing other interests within the Third Sector. These will include working to establish a Free School in Southampton and developing the services of Southampton MENCAP, of which he has been a Trustee for 33 years. He will also be working as an independent consultant.

He said he had enjoyed his time at SCA very much.
“We now serve around 100,000 people who depend on SCA Group for a range of services. In developing the organization I have worked with a fantastic range of colleagues who worked hard to achieve a vision; it is an experience which I will never forget.”

Mr Strevens’ colleagues will hold an informal farewell ceremony for him at Fenwick2 Health and Well-being Centre in Lyndhurst on January 25. A plaque will be unveiled to mark Mr Streven’s contribution to the group and to services for local communities.

Further information is available at www.scagroup.co.uk or from Lindsey Darking on 01425 617175; 07775 891715.

Social Enterprise Mark holder, Oxford Wood Recycling operates a waste wood collection service from an industrial unit in Didcot, collecting timber from businesses in a 30 mile radius.

The team collects waste wood, timber and pallets from construction sites, business premises, and universities/colleges carrying out 60 plus collections a month.

Collections are made by paid staff members who load by hand into a caged truck, separating clean re-usable timber as they load. Up to 12 cubic yards of waste wood can be collected, over 1,200kg in weight- which is approximately 50 pallets in size.

Fees for collection are always lower than the cost of a mixed builders skip, because the collectors stack the material very efficiently in the truck.

Richard Snow, Chief Executive Officer of Oxford Wood Recycling, said: “We are the only wood collection service in Oxfordshire that offers to reuse timber. We are an economic and environmental alternative to a skip.”

The truck is then driven to the Oxford Wood Recycling industrial unit where, on average 15% – 20% of the timber is stored for re-use. The remainder is taken to a licensed recycler for shredding, with the end use mainly being energy generation.

Re-useable timber is then sold for DIY use or sawn and bagged for firewood. Prices for second hand timber are generally half of what a customer would pay for new. Customers are able to buy directly from the business at The Wood Shop which is located at the industrial unit, and special bulk buys of wood can be purchased online.

Part of the loan was used to design and fit two bespoke vehicles with features such as a tipping body, a custom fitted cage and onboard weighing scales. The completed vehicles were introduced to the fleet in November and December. One original truck is still in operation, and is now used to offer a reclaimed wood delivery service to customers. The rest of the loan was been used to purchase machinery to help grow a firewood business.

Kindling and firewood is sold wholesale to more than 30 convenience stores. The hope is to increase this to 70 shops, garden centres and 20 petrol stations in the coming three years.

As well as the environmental benefits the business aims to provide employment and volunteering opportunities for those people facing real barriers to working.

Ian Taylor, from Co-operative & Community Finance, said: “We were very impressed that the business not only had a realistic commercial approach but also had a beneficial social function, offering employment and volunteer opportunities to people who are finding a route back into work difficult.”

IQS Travel offers a wide range of holidays to suit everyone and all tastes. What really makes it stand out above other travel companies is that it specialises in accessible holidays for disabled people.

The team at Ideal for All understand the difficulty that disabled people face when booking short breaks or a holiday so IQS Travel was set to help disabled people find a suitable break to suit their needs. However, the holidays are not just restricted to disabled people, anyone can book a holiday or business trip IQS Travel.

Carol Goff, Chair of Ideal for All said: “We set IQS Travel up in May 2011. Customers that have used the travel service have been very complimentary about the specialist advice and holidays we provide. People are booking holidays with us because they know that all profits are being used to support a good cause.

Our travel service is aimed at everyone but we saw that there was a gap in the market for accessible holidays. We are a charity of disabled people working to help disabled people and through personal experience we are aware of the difficulties and barriers that we face when booking a holiday, so we have set up this agency with two aims in mind. One to support people with specialist accessible holidays and secondly to generate income to support the services our charity provides for local disabled and vulnerable people.”

IQS Travel is certified with the Social Enterprise Mark, which proves the company is in business to help society and protect the environment. The company has also recently won the ‘Choose Social Enterprise’ SE Profit Award. This award recognises IQS Travel as one of the shining lights in social enterprise in the region.

This year’s successful organisations are Shencare Voluntary Transport Ltd and ChangeKitchen CIC.

Shencare Voluntary Transport – Shencare is a community transport organisation providing escorted wheelchair accessible passenger transport in a fleet of 10 minibuses for elderly and vulnerable individuals, who otherwise would be at risk of social isolation. Shencare have established partnerships with Midland Mencap and Birmingham Volunteer Services to provide work experience opportunities which have subsequently led to paid employment, as well as delivering training for the MiDAS minibus driver’s certificate.

CEO Christopher Busst commented: “In the coming year we hope to continue our journey to becoming more self-sustainable and this will entail taking a more professional approach to fulfilling our contracts and service level agreements and the way in which staff and volunteers are recruited, inducted, trained and self-enabled to be the “front of house” for the charity. This free subscription with Roots HR will undoubtedly help us to achieve our objectives and we really look forward to the partnership.”

ChangeKitchen– ChangeKitchen provides high quality vegetarian/vegan catering for events from 10 to 400, with dishes suitable for those from different faiths, those with food allergies or different diets. They achieve this by employing and training people who would otherwise find it difficult to enter the labour market, as well as delivering healthy eating cookery classes to change the way people think about food.

Director Dr Birgit Kehrer commented: “I am delighted to have won this great 1 year’s free HR support subscription by Roots HR. I have known Roots HR for a long time and always valued their work greatly. ChangeKitchen will greatly benefit from this by working hard with Roots HR on getting all our policies, work and volunteers contracts and similar documents up to the best possible standards. This will ensure all of our employees and volunteers, in particular all ex service user employees and volunteers, have the best possible framework for working with us.”

A team of Roots HR consultants chose these two organisations for the free 12-month subscriptions because of their growth potential and ongoing need for HR support. Chief Executive Jan Golding explains: “We had a great response to this offer and choosing the successful organisations from our shortlist was difficult. We have chosen Shencare Voluntary Transport and ChangeKitchen because we felt they had the most to gain and could maximize the offer to its full potential. However, we are also looking at ways to work with some of the unsuccessful applicants to deliver the project work they need”.

Roots HR will monitor the outcomes of these free subscriptions to identify the benefit to the organisations and their service users. The information gained will inform the design of future offers that use Roots HR’s trading surpluses.

Imagematch MD, Mark Gibson (right) being presented with the Social Enterprise of the Year award by Tim Duffield, regional director, business banking, Nat West.

Certified as a genuine social enterprise with the Social Enterprise Mark, Shrewsbury-based Imagematch Social Enterprise CIC walked away with the award at the recent Startups Awards 2011. Organised by Startups.co.uk the annual awards are sponsored by Nat West and this year took place at Kensington Roof Gardens.

Three finalists were nominated for each of the 13 categories, with the eventual winners of each category selected by a panel consisting of some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs, including Joe Cohen, founder of Seatwave, Mitesh Soma, founder of Chemist Direct, Rosemary Forsyth, founder of the Forsyth Group, and Lara Morgan, founder of the Pacific Direct Group. Judging criteria was based on sales volume, visionary leadership and social and community responsibility.

Mark Gibson, director at Imagematch, which also received a commendation at the Morgan Foundation Entrepreneur Awards in October, said: “We were up against some inspirational people at the ceremony who had backing from the likes of Dragons’ Den’s Deborah Meaden, so to win this award is fantastic. It represents the hard work my team have put in this year. We are rigorous and comprehensive in our employability assessments and always aim to provide good quality candidates for potential employers. However, while we are very pleased to win an award, 2012 will bring further challenges. There are now one million unemployed young people in the UK and through the Work Programme and Jobs Growth Wales we will strive to find opportunities for those of them in the region to get back into work.”

Organisers were impressed with the strong and diverse selection of finalists. Steph Welstead, editor of Startups.co.uk, said: “We were blown away by the standard of entries to this year’s Startups Awards. All of the businesses who made it to the 2011 final have shown innovation, guts and determination and the success they have achieved against the backdrop of the economic downturn is a true testament to the strength of UK entrepreneurship.

“Competition was fierce but the judges felt that each one of our winners had demonstrated sheer brilliance. Their stories will provide much inspiration both to people who are looking to start a business and to those who have already taken the plunge. We would like to congratulate all of this year’s winners and look forward to reporting on their continued growth and success in the years to come.”

The graduation ceremony gave the SSE-East alumni the chance to demonstrate their achievements to established social entrepreneurs, business leaders and angel investors though a series of presentations, pitches and demonstrations. Amongst those attending to celebrate the student’s achievements was Matthew Cole of Prettys who are a principal sponsor of SSE – East and who have worked to mentor many of the students. Congratulating the students on their achievements Mr Cole said: “As an organisation, we have long recognised the very significant contribution social entrepreneurs can make to our region’s economic and social prosperity. We are delighted that we have been able to help these new social entrepreneurs on their way to starting new businesses.”

Some of the graduates have established successful social enterprises that are already making a significant economic and social impact in their markets. Jo Douglas has established Allied Health Professionals as a social enterprise to deliver outpatient community musculoskeletal physiotherapy services and back and neck services across Suffolk. The company now employs 78 people with a turnover of £2.4 m and has delivered 60,000 patient treatments. Allied Health Professionals is certified with the Social Enterprise Mark, which assesses social enterprises against robust criteria for social enterprise – proving they are in business to do good, for people and planet.

Fellow student, Nicola Bradbury has successfully set up Lime Skills, employing six people to provide high quality, competitive learning and development in the care sector. Lime Skills has just very recently become a certified social enterprise awarded with the Social Enterprise Mark – on the 1 December.

Eastern Enterprise Hub Chief Executive, Celia Hodson, paid tribute to everyone involved saying; “The graduation of our first set of students represents a combination of vision, dedication and talent not only from our students but also from the amazing social entrepreneurs and business leaders who have given so much to nurture and guide our students. The support from business leaders for the EE Hub since January has been truly staggering, working with our students for an amazing 2,560 days, worth some £1.9m, of their time pro-bono.“

The graduation of the first SSE–East student intake is a significant milestone for the Eastern Enterprise Hub. Since opening for business last November the EE Hub has welcomed a second cohort of 18 students into SSE-East, has developed the Enterprise Academy for 16 to 18 year olds and has started an Enterprise Club to help people who have been out of the work place establish businesses. Coming months will see the EE Hub develop more activity beyond Suffolk and also work with partners to develop more short and bespoke intensive courses on social enterprise as a business model.