Top expert heads up enterprise drive

• 21/02/2008

ONE of the region's leading social enterprise experts is heading up a new £1.6 million drive to transform Hendon and the East End by boosting business and creating jobs.

Former director of Social Enterprise Europe, Linda Rutter, has joined city-based enterprise agency SES as project manager of The Enterprising Community Zone - an innovative four year project funded by Back on the Map to promote, help and support new and existing businesses in Hendon and the East End.

The ground-breaking scheme is being managed and delivered by Sunderland-based enterprise agency SES on behalf of Back on the Map, the New Deal for Communities programme for Hendon and the East End of Sunderland. The project aims to boost business activity in the area and will build on the wider regeneration work already carried out by Back on The Map.

And Linda hopes that the experience she has gained to date - which in recent years has involved sharing good practice and expertise with partners in Italy, Poland and Finland - will help her to establish a permanent legacy that will have a lasting effect in the city.

She said: "For the last 15 years I have been working in the field of community economic development, creating employment opportunities in disadvantaged areas - both on a managerial and grass roots level.

"I am hoping all the experience I have had to date - both at a strategic and local level - will prove useful in my new role and I am really looking forward to the opportunity to once again work at a grass roots level. I want to help create a real legacy for the community that will bring about change and have a lasting impact.

"I have working class roots and I am fully aware of the true entrepreneurial spirit that can exist in communities like the one I grew up in - I am a product of that myself.

"I am now looking forward to tapping into that spirit in Hendon and the East End and by being ambitious in our thinking and actions, increase skills and employment opportunities and help to create an investment plan for the city."

The overall aim of the ECZ project is to establish Hendon and the East End as a place to do business and the cash will be used to fund a comprehensive package of measures that include:

• Helping to create more than 100 new business start-ups, particularly among lone parents, long term sick and disabled, people aged over 45 and ethnic minorities.
• Providing mentoring and on-going support, to reduce business failure rates.
  Supporting 450 existing businesses and providing support and expertise to help them grow
• Encouraging businesses from outside the area to re-locate.
• Setting up a business experts' panel, to boost innovation, help secure financial incentives for business start-ups, focus on the regeneration of Villette Road and maximise IT technology in the area.

Project General Manager Kevin Marquis added: "We have been hunting for the right person to drive this activity forward and we believe Linda is the ideal person to connect at both a grass roots and managerial level.

"She knows the issues here and she has vast experience in the field of enterprise at all levels.  Having her at the helm will, we believe, help this campaign make a real difference."

SES specialises in and has a track record of promoting, developing and supporting enterprise and self-employment over the past 24 years in Sunderland's hard-pressed communities.

People interested in free business start-up support and advice in Sunderland can contact SES on 0191 565 0476.