14,000 CICs — and Still No One in Government Knows What We Do

Fourteen thousand. That’s how many CICs were on the register when we smashed through the barrier in January this year. Fourteen thousand organisations, most of them delivering real services to real communities, generating billions in economic value, creating jobs, providing care, generating clean energy, running cultural venues, and doing all of it within a legal framework designed to ensure that profit serves purpose rather than the other way around.

And I don’t think a single government minister noticed.

The CIC model has now been around for thirteen years. It’s generated more than 14,000 organisations. It’s been adopted across every sector of the economy. It’s been tested, refined, and proven. And still, when the government talks about social enterprise, it’s in the context of charities and co-ops. CICs are an afterthought, if they’re thought of at all.

I know this sounds like a broken record. I’ve been making this point since 2009, and nothing has changed. But the scale of the disconnect is becoming absurd. Fourteen thousand organisations is not a niche. It’s not an experiment. It’s a significant part of the British economy, and it’s being ignored because it doesn’t fit neatly into the policy categories that Whitehall understands.

The Treasury doesn’t have a CIC desk. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport doesn’t have a CIC programme. The Cabinet Office’s social enterprise team is focused on broader issues. Nobody in government has CICs as their specific remit.

And the result is that 14,000 organisations are operating without the policy support they need. No dedicated investment programme. No tailored business support. No coherent government strategy for the legal structure that’s becoming the default choice for new social enterprises.

I don’t expect the government to solve all our problems. But I do expect them to notice that 14,000 organisations have chosen a legal structure that didn’t exist fifteen years ago, and to ask themselves whether that might be worth paying attention to.