What is an Enterprise Trust?
The Enterprise Trust model was originally established in the early 1980's in an environment when the Scottish economy was undergoing significant change. Traditional industries such as coal mining, steel, shipbuilding and heavy engineering were all in decline.
This had significant impact on local communities and Enterprise Trusts were established as locally led initiatives across Scotland to support the regeneration of communities through focusing on small businesses.
The Enterprise Trust model incorporates the following characteristics:
- Core activity: encouraging & supporting entrepreneurial activity, creating a steady stream of successful new businesses and supporting the development of established Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) generally of size of up to 250 employees.
- Ethos: adding value for SMEs locally through the experience and knowledge of their Boards of Directors drawn from both the private and public sectors.
- Acting as market makers in service provision and in doing so working with the private sector.
- Engaging with the private sector locally and nationally in the development of new and established SMEs.
- The Enterprise Trusts are run as a business and generating surpluses but re-investing surpluses in services for the benefit of clients.
- Locally-based with a long term commitment to the area they serve developing long term relationships with their clients. In many areas Enterprise Trusts also deliver Business Gateway contracts.
(source: Business Enterprise Scotland; http://www.bes.org.uk/about/ )
