Trinity Fencing and Landscaping

Simon’s idea for his social enterprise came from his experiences mentoring in prisons; the main goals of the offenders were to get decent jobs, become repurposed and not just simply have employment to pay bills and also that there was a lack of male role models in their lives. Three social issues that were raised by the young offenders were lack of accommodation, mentoring and training and equipping with skills. Simon had a background in commercial fencing, landscape gardening and design and tree and vegetation management and decided to use it as a vehicle to address those three social issues for young offenders.

His programme includes:

·         8 Week programme – which is very effective at bringing young people in who are referred from youth offending teams and who lack basic skills, qualifications and experience meaning they are somewhat floating and lost. The programme teaches them the basics alongside low level mentoring in areas such as personal hygiene and time keeping. Work clothing is provided and members of the programme join in working for a big local subcontractor and get actual authentic real life insertion into the life of the average working man; something that has rarely been modelled for them

·         Additional he offers a two year NVQ and workers receive a skilled workers card at the conclusion.

Business model is CIC which is limited by guarantee and his friends act as his directors. It has been difficult getting funding as investors are hesitant to back a new CIC as on the face of it, people only seemed to see a business. For Simon, getting in front of people and talking face to face was the key to gaining investment because they could see the passion behind the project and the potential impact. He found the third sector difficult to negotiate as you have a lot of people fighting over the same pots of money and it can be very cutthroat.