What is a Social Enterprise?
Our Complaints Policy
You First Support Services is a Social Enterprise and embraces the definition of Social Enterprise as put forward by Social Enterprise UK:
“A social enterprise is a business that trades for a social and/or environmental purpose.
It will have a clear sense of its ‘social mission’: which means it will know what difference it is trying to make, who it aims to help, and how it plans to do it.
It will bring in most or all of its income through selling goods or services. And it will also have clear rules about what it does with its profits, reinvesting these to further the ‘social mission’”.
Community Interest Company
Community Interest Companies are companies that have been established for the greater good of the community. They are aimed at social enterprises that do not have charity status.
The benefit of a Community Interest Company is that the company does not have any financial or growth restraints, as with a charity and maintains trust within the community, which might be lost by trading as a private company.
There are two main features unique to Community Interest Companies:
Community Interest Test
The ‘Community Interest Test’ is carried out by the Regulator and is designed to ensure that the Community Interest Company will be run in the interests of the community.
You First Support Services will be required to submit a community interest statement declaring that services provided and the presence of the service in the market place will be for the benefit of the community.
The statement should include the intended activities and confirm whose interests the company’s officers serve. You First Support Services will be required to confirm that is not connected or controlled by a political party or engaged in defined political activities.
Directors will be required to submit an annual community interest report to highlight how You First Support Services is acting in accordance with its status.
The ‘Asset Lock’
The ‘Asset Lock’ is designed to ensure that investors, along with the community know that their money will be legally tied to You First Support Services and its interest in the greater good for the community will be maintained.
Under the Asset Lock, any assets or profits raised by You First Support Services must be retained within the company or transferred to another organisation that has an asset lock itself (e.g. a charity or another Community Interest Company).
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