Rossendale has never really enjoyed the funding bonanza that many of our neighbouring districts experienced. Instead we have had to get used to doing a lot more with a lot less and generally recognising that it’s largely up to us to help ourselves. PEER Support’s place in all this is to support, and often bring together, people who want to do something to make Rossendale a better place. We have found this makes a massive difference. People don’t feel like they are trying to do something alone, but rather have all the contacts and knowledge that they need to make something happen. Projects like PEER Support are the missing link needed to release the enterprising potential of a community.
How Does PEER Support Work?
PEER Support is essentially a big network of people from across Rossendale, volunteers from all walks of life, who are ready and available to help enterprising people and ideas. Within that network is a huge amount of creativity, skills, experience, local knowledge and connections. Added to this is the experience and skill of our trained volunteer mentors who can work directly with individuals and groups to help make things happen. We have found that this is a potent combination and the results speak for themselves.
PEER Support Impact
The impact of PEER Support has grown year by year and more than 600 businesses have been helped since we started life in 2003. Of those around 70 per cent were new businesses, the remaining 30 per cent are existing businesses who were seeking to grow.
Our definition of start-up business help is where we can show that PEER has provided substantive support. In other words, we only count those businesses which would not have started without our help. Likewise expansions are only counted where a business has undergone a step change with help from PEER Support.
Sometimes, because PEER Support is long term, this can be more than one step change. The figures also throw up some interesting facts. For example, well over 50% of our clients come from Rossendale’s most deprived wards. Our community approach means that we have enjoyed notable success with what are often termed ‘hard to reach’ groups. The figures also show that 47 per cent of our clients are women.
Of course, helping business is our aim but PEER Support has also been effective at bringing different individuals and communities together through our enterprise board. More than 100 business people and community activists have been board members and remain part of our extended network supporting enterprise in Rossendale.
Another area where we’ve enjoyed success has been in connecting business support in the area. Representatives of Business Link, Pennine Lancashire Enterprise Trust and Rossendale Borough Council are all PEER Support members and our meetings will often be the forum for joined up action.
PEER Support has proved particularly effective in supporting Social Enterprises — they make up some 17 per cent of our clients. It’s no surprise therefore to find that in surveys carried out by Lancashire County Council Rossendale has by far the highest concentration of social enterprises per capita in the county.
I think you will find that PEER has now helped around 600 businesses across Rossendale and the need for PEER Support is now greater than ever due to the current Economic Climate.
I also think contact details for PEER Support should be at the foot of the first article that appears on this home page – can this be done for all ‘lead articles’ in the future?
Done, and yes!
Thank you. I also noticed yesterday that the link into the Facebook Group page for PEER states that we still work through our ‘Paid Facilitator’ so it doesn’t appear to have been updated to reflect our new ‘Mentor’ way of working. Can you please check this our for me?