Great Yarmouth Enterprise

Last week I met Kevin Horne the Chief Executive from Great Yarmouth (GY) Enterprise. They were set up in 1982 and the work they do has a great beneficial impact for our economy by helping keep more people in work and less on benefits.

GY Enterprise specialise in helping people who have a good idea for a business a reality, this is not an easy task especially in our current economic climate. They have access to a network of trained business mentors to provide guidance and support in start up and the early days. They offer all of this for free and this service has proved invaluable for many businesses as GY Enterprise helps set up around 5000 new businesses a year and by doing this they are saving the government around 8 million a year in benefits, by keeping people in work. Business support is vital especially when businesses are starting out and have little experience and GY Enterprise are proving invaluable in this area. They also offer business loans to anyone who has been refused credit from a bank at 11% and the borrower again gets monthly meeting support.

GY Enterprise also offer self confidence training, CV writing and interview skills to women returning to work. Often women have been at home while their children grow up and do not know how to get back into the job market and they need to be mentored back to work. Recently, a Channel 4 programme, Benefit Busters followed a group of out of work women, who were being mentored by a company similar to GY Enterprise to get them back into work. This group of women had been unemployed for a while and said they couldn’t find work but by having their confidence boosted, by being helped with application forms and CV’s, 75% were all back in work by the end of their intensive six-week course. This type of work is imperative if we are to get unemployment down and cut the amount of benefits we pay out. We need to invest in companies like GY Enterprise to help people fulfill their dreams and to keep and help people return to work.