Social enterprise: Market trends 2017

Abstract

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) jointly commissioned a report focused on improving the methodology, which allows identification of social enterprises in the UK small business population. Based on this improved methodology and a dedicated survey of a representative sample of the UK small business population, this report provides estimates of the number of social enterprises in the UK, describes the key characteristics of social enterprises and compares these to those of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The survey employed the approach, sampling strategy and telephone survey questionnaire used in the UK Small Business Survey (SBS) and included 1,300 business owners and managers as respondents. Aston Business School and BMG, independent research organisations, carried out the work and survey on behalf of DCMS and BEIS from 2016 to 2017. Previous reports on Social enterprise market trends have been published for 2012 and 2014. Note that due to methodological changes the findings from previous reports cannot be directly compared to the 2017 report.