The Editor's Post: After UK budget announcement, impact leaders ask "who owns the high street?"

UK prime minister Andy Burnham promised to “make a break with the direction of the past 40 years and put Britain on a new path” in his speech at the Labour party conference in September. 

From the looks of this week’s budget, the first under Burnham’s leadership, the turn onto that new path is still someway down the road. A budget of small tweaks and slight adjustments, it is not the radical break from neoliberal orthodoxy some had hoped for. 

But, there are a number of measures in the budget which are important for the social enterprise sector, from investment in tackling homelessness, to business rate relief for small businesses, to new support for community lenders. Read this week’s top story to find out what social enterprise and impact community leaders say matters most for the sector in the budget. 

The budget detailed measures to provide support for entrepreneurs to launch, sustain and scale businesses. Chancellor John Healey said the budget would champion “small British firms that give character to our communities” and that he was taking action to help them “to invest, to recruit, to expand”.  

While those announcements were broadly welcomed, a number of the experts we spoke to questioned whether enough was being done to ensure the new funding and support would reach the communities who need it most. 

Abdirahim Hassan, co-founder of Coffee Afrik, has been involved in running small businesses since he launched the east London-based social enterprise’s first cafe in 2018.

In Hassan’s view, the measure of a successful budget is not how many businesses receive relief, but whether communities historically excluded from economic power gain the means to build, own and sustain their futures.

He asked: “Who owns our high streets, who controls their wealth, and who benefits from public investment?” 

Hassan believes the government needs to create an economic environment where community wealth can be retained locally, where social value is recognised alongside commercial profit and where grassroots enterprises have the security to invest in people rather than navigating financial precarity.

Bayo Adelaja, CEO of Do it Now Now, expressed concerns similar to those of Hassan. She said the government needs to closely examine who is able to access the additional funding it has announced. 

“That means proportionate funding requirements, investment in organisational capacity and meaningful participation from community-led organisations in local economic decision-making,” she said. 

These are not new problems. In December 2024, Social Enterprise UK research found that little progress had been made in transforming UK social investment to meet the real needs of social entrepreneurs, particularly those from black and minority ethnic communities, in the three years since the Adebowale Commission on Social Investment condemned the state of the sector. 

If Burnham truly wants to lead the country down a new economic path and address the concerns of Hassan, Adelaja, the Adebowale Commission and others, it is going to take much more than just small tweaks. 

Office for the Impact Economy revival

One last nugget from the budget was the Office for the Impact Economy being allocated a funding pot for a very specific mission: “to work with businesses, investors and philanthropists to mobilise additional funding to support women and girls”, as part of the government’s plan to tackle misogyny. 

A few weeks ago, sources said the Office was at best “on life support”, with a minister who “didn't really get it”. So, while the scope of its mission might look rather narrow, it is actually “reassuring”, as Better Society Capital boss CEO Stephen Muers puts it, to see it being used to deliver one aspect of the government’s agenda. 

If it does this job well, might the Office for the Impact Economy be allocated wider-ranging work in the future? Or is this a case of the government giving the Office one job to keep it busy?

This week's top stories:

UK budget 2026: impact leaders tell us what matters

Impact investments worldwide hit US$1.76tn as growth slows – GIIN report

Digital transformation for social enterprises: start with the problem, not the technology

Top image: Angela Rayner (secretary of state for housing, communities and local government) and UK prime minister Andy Burnham (centre) visit Ilkeston high street in Derbyshire, England (credit: UK Prime Minister, Flickr)