31 May 2006 - Partnership Support for Community Enterprises
Partnership Support for Community Enterprises
Derbyshire County Council Community Economic Development Team in partnership with the Derbyshire Rural Community Council and Business Links were commissioned by the Employment & Transport Action Group of the Bolsover Local Strategic Partnership to investigate the needs of community enterprises in Bolsover.
A sum of £20,000 was allocated through neighbourhood renewal funding which was to be used to develop a tool that would provide a health check on selected community enterprises. The objective was to determine whether the enterprises experienced problems “in common” that could be addressed through some form of central services.
The Partnership felt it was important to ensure that the pilot covered the range of community enterprises in Bolsover and that included emerging enterprises as well as the more established ones.
In all, the health check was undertaken by eight community enterprises.
Findings included lack of funding, lack of market research, capacity and rigour issues and leadership problems.
To help tackle this, grants have been awarded to these enterprises to provide support including web and marketing support, admin support and training.