EEDA - East of England Development Agency

Why Investing in Communities?

Enabling everyone to participate is essential for the continued growth and development of our economy - harnessing the untapped time, skills and creativity of our population to ensure that we remain one of the UK's top performing regions. Through the Investing in Communities programme EEDA has been tackling the barriers that prevent some groups of people from participating fully.

Our achievements:

• changing the way we work: during 2007-8 the county and unitary local authorities in the region have taken over accountability for our sub-regional programme, aligned to their Local Area Agreement outcomes – demonstrating our commitment to the government's sub-national review agenda. This important strategic transformation is already delivering a more accountable and transparent means of delivering value and investment to targeted communities in the region.
• taking our migrant worker programme national: EEDA is widely recognised for its work on issues around migrant labour. As well as supporting studies on migration trends and experiences – feeding into both the regional and national debate – EEDA also commissioned a pilot online information portal for both workers and employers. This "one stop shop" provides detailed information and signposting to valuable information sources in multiple languages. Recognised for its excellence, a national portal is now to be delivered across England with a number of regional development agencies supporting its development.
• investing in social enterprise: a coherent package of social enterprise support has now been created. During the year, a five year community development finance package was let to Foundation East, providing loan finance across the region to viable social enterprises that would struggle to find funding from high street banks.
  
  The new Building Communities Fund has also delivered tangible results by enabling community-owned organisations to purchase or develop community assets. The Ferry Project is typical of the success we are seeing – creating a self-sustaining business in Wisbech providing employment and training opportunities for homeless people.