The Scottish Government aspires to achieve 80% employment by 2025 equaling 167,000 people in work. Workforce Plus records an additional 509,000 inactive people and of these approximately 168,000 would like to work, a sizeable proportion of which are in the target groups mentioned above.

The economy with its current growth rate cannot absorb these numbers - more jobs need to be created. Social Firms create new jobs through business and are a solution to moving a significant proportion of inactive people into work.

Social Firms are an efficient employability solution for disadvantaged people - a Social Firm aims to generate a minimum of 50% of its income from the sales of goods/service thereby covering a large proportion of its total costs. However SFS recognise the need to develop stable funding sources to subsidise the economic shortfall of current Social Firms due to higher support needs of their target group(s) and scale of existing businesses.

In partnership with Social Firms UK, Social Firms Scotland has the following recommendations to secure the growth of Social Firms in a sustainable way:

   - A "Social Firm Start Up Fund" linking business support, mentoring and the achievement of set milestones by the organisation starting the Social Firm

   - Pilot a tax credit starter scheme to enable people to overcome existing financial disincentives to paid employment, particularly in setting up social enterprises

   - Abolish the earnings disregard to enable more people to engage in paid employment on a supported permitted basis up to 16 hours per week, or at above minimum wage levels

   - Carry out thorough research into the impact of Social Firms to enable a robust and convincing evidence base to be built