What is Local Access?

Local Access is a ten-year social economy programme delivered by six local partnerships across England. It aims to build thriving, inclusive social economies.

The Social Economy is a collective term for all ‘not for personal profit’ organisations that exist to address economic, social and environmental challenges using trading and enterprise models. 

£30m is being jointly invested by Access and Better Society Capital in six Local Access places; Bradford, Bristol, Gainsborough, Greater Manchester, Hartlepool/Redcar/Cleveland and Southwark. The six places have tailored their plans for enterprise support and social investment to respond to the needs of their local social economy. It places a priority on impact not solely capital growth, seeking to support the growth and resilience of the social economy in these six places – to ultimately help reduce poverty and inequality, and ensure these communities can thrive. This includes a diverse range of initiatives across the places; from the use of local building assets to develop enterprise models, to developing pathways to Public Sector markets for social enterprises.

The six places are led by partnerships made up of local social enterprises and enterprise change makers, local enterprise support and infrastructure organisations, social investors, Local Authorities, universities and other organisations interested in the social economy.

We want to learn how to build strong local infrastructure that supports enterprise growth for charities and social enterprises and to understand whether, by doing this, there is a wider impact on the resilience of local communities and economies.  Though Local Access is funded by Access and BSC the place-based partnerships take the lead. They are supported by learning partners such as The Curiosity Society and The Good Economy so the ‘we’ I refer to is the collective, working together on building a movement around place-based social economy development.

Why is place-based working important to us?

Access was set up to grow the reach of social investment and to do so by disrupting the existing market. We support enterprise development as a way of building resilient organisations in underserved communities and places. Earning an independent income through trading provides organisations with agency and economic power.  When a social economy works well in a place more trading charities and social enterprises might see social investment as a way of growing their impact. As a result, we should expect to see demand for social investment grow in places thinking about their social economy. Often the trading models that are developed by local charities and social enterprises are those that meet the needs of their local community and are more likely to generate better outcomes for local people. These are also the same charities and social enterprises that are likely to employ local people and support local money flows through local spend. Crucially, locally led solutions can help to resolve the knotty problems that services without local knowledge and connections might struggle to. If we want to address economic inequity, we need to redress power imbalances and increase the ability to access finance – this in turn will build resilience and local agency by establishing strong local foundations.

Why do we want to share our learning?

Place-based working has been around for as long as communities have come together to make change happen so we’re aware this is just one of countless place-based funding programmes. In fact, at the start of this process we invited other place-based funders and partners to help us design and develop the Local Access programme. We learnt so much from their experience and expertise and it’s only right that we pay that forward. We want to share our learning so that funders or places that are interested in social economy development don’t have to reinvent the wheel but instead can concentrate on the really important things like understanding the local context and how to support partnerships to become conduits for support, challenge, learning and legacy. I’ve also referred to being part of larger movement around place-based action and we want this learning to support and build that wider movement.

What do we want to share?

Well, in short, everything. Though we’re not even halfway through the life of the programme we have lots to share about the process of programme design, supporting locally-led partnerships, the challenges of enterprise development, locally designed social investment funds and what we’ve learnt about supporting the social economy in places.

Over the next few months together with our place and learning partners we will share our collective experience on topics such as:

• The process of programme and application design and whether we’d use the same process if we were doing it again.
• Navigating the (power) elephant in the room – recognising the power funders have and how to support partnerships without becoming over-influential
• How we’re ‘doing’ learning – and what we’ve learnt so far