Help Starting Up - Many Questions Be Gentle

Stewy81

Hi there brief outline...

The company i work for is a private residential home and runs a social services funded day centre for the local community. The company has decided to close the day centre and end the contract with social services. Im making the assumtion that the contract is going to come up for tender shortly. Therefore the 3 staff members including myself are wanting to set up a small business/non profit organisation to apply for this contract. We are not doing this to make a profit we just want to help the local community and get paid a reasonable wage as we are now and secure our jobs as we are facing redundancy.

Questions,

1, What do we register as? we will need a bank account.
2, there is a posibility we could make a small profit ie <10,000 a year which we could re invest into the company for our own premises a new vehicle.

I think that is the starting point for the thread i hope somone can help with some positive input shortly!

Thanks in advance
Stewy81

fengirl_2

In answer to your questions:
There is no such thing as a not for profit organisation in the UK. All orgs make a profit - you need to decide if you are all going to have a share in the profit, or if you are going to put the profit back into the service. There are several other questions I would ask you if we spoke face to face. You may want to go down the social enterprise route which does allow you to take some of the profit. I suggest you go and speak to your local CVS and your local co-operative development agency. If you tell me where you are, I can give you contacts.

Stewy81

Ok i am so new to this as its a grey area for me...

We are based in cambridge.

The social enterprise sounds like this could be what we are looking for.

Ideally we are not interested in the profit its continuing the good service our service users are getting with the sme staff but there are all these technicalities that we are a bit new too.

Thanks again for your speedy reply fengirl; and what are the other questions you would ask? im fairly open to discuss..

fengirl_2

As it happens I was a long time Cambridge resident until 2 yrs ago!

Contact The Social Enterprise People on C 350977 (I know them well and delivered some training for them).They will talk through the options for you, but it sounds as if you want to be forming a Community Interest Company.

Stewy81

Thanks fengirl but is my other option just to start a limited company and run it that way as a CIC will not get any tax relief so why havethe hassle of setting up a CIC when its the same as a ltd company???

fengirl_2

A limited company is the same hassle as a CIC. You said in your question that you wanted it to be for the benefit of the community and that's what a CIC does. If you want to start a simple business, then go down the limited company route. I think you need to discuss this with The Enterprise People who will explain all the pro's and con's.

Stewy81

Ok fengirl I'll give them a call it is for the community but also its a social servicers contract so therefore we have to consider that I was expecting tax relief for the company as a not for profit but I swee this is only with charity and the 3 of us expect to be paid we also don't have our own premises so we need to sort that too! I think I'll give them a call and speak to them but I'm thinking limited company I have been involverd with setting a limited company up before so I know that process! And if it benefits me in the long term finantially then all the better! Thanks again for your help!