Social enterprise in the North East

There is a rich variety of social enterprise in the North East region that includes many of the organisations and individuals who have pioneered the movement in the UK. 

The North East was one of the first regions to set up a strategic social enterprise body and to have a social enterprise action plan adopted by its regional development agency.

A number of new enterprise models for care providers, community facilities, leisure trusts, social firms, development trusts, housing co-operatives, fairtrade businesses and environmental enterprises started in the North East have since been replicated in other regions.

It is very difficult to give an accurate estimate of the number of social enterprises in the North East region. Social enterprises are distributed over a wide range of organisational forms and business activities and there is no easy way of identifying them.

The last regional mapping exercise, conducted for the North East Social Enterprise Partnership in 2007, estimated that there were between 1,000 and 2,000 social enterprises in the region. These ranged from very large enterprises with turnovers of several million pounds to micro enterprises with no paid employees.