The £1.4 Billion Blind Spot

Every year, the government publishes reams of statistics about the social economy. Every year, think tanks produce reports on the third sector. Every year, consultants write strategy papers about social enterprise. And every year, somehow, the CIC movement slips through the cracks.

The “A Fair Share” research gave us the most comprehensive picture yet of the CIC sector’s economic footprint. Our conservative estimate puts it at a minimum of £1.4 billion. By other calculations — taking into account the full range of CIC activity across community transport, social care, renewable energy, the arts, and everything in between — it’s already in excess of £2.5 billion.

That’s billion. With a B. And those numbers are growing.

We’re now seeing 172 new CICs incorporated every month. The upward trend hasn’t slowed since the legislation came into force in 2005. In the middle of a recession, with public spending being slashed and traditional funding drying up, CICs are growing faster than ever. That’s not just impressive — it’s telling you something fundamental about how people want to organise for social purpose.

But here’s what gets me. There’s no dedicated support program for CICs. There’s no CIC-specific investment fund worth the name. There’s no government unit tracking CIC growth or promoting the model. The CIC Regulator does a good job with limited resources, but her remit is regulatory, not developmental. For actual support, advice, and advocacy, there’s us — the CIC Association — running on a shoestring because we’re a CIC ourselves.

The contrast with the co-operative sector is instructive. Co-ops have the Co-operative Group, the Co-operative Bank, the Community Shares Unit, and a dedicated legal framework that’s been refined over 150 years. They’re taken seriously by policymakers and investors. Nobody asks what a co-op is.

CICs have the opposite problem. Our numbers are impressive, our growth is accelerating, and our impact is real. But because we don’t fit neatly into existing categories — not charity, not company, not co-op — we’re invisible to the systems that should be supporting us.

The £1.4 billion figure should be a wake-up call. If a new industry sector had appeared from nothing in eight years and was already generating that kind of economic value, the government would be tripping over itself to offer support. But because CICs are spread across every community and every sector, doing their work quietly without lobbying for attention, the scale of what we’ve achieved goes unnoticed.

The “A Fair Share” report is one step toward changing that. It puts hard numbers on the table. Now we need policymakers to look at them.