An independent evaluation of a West Midlands social economy programme

Enterprise Nation needed an independent process and light-touch impact evaluation of its contribution, with delivery partner BEC, to the West Midlands Combined Authority's Social Economy Business Growth programme. PolicyDepartment was the evaluation lead: building a logic model for each strand, reviewing programme data against objectives, consulting funders and delivery partners, running a beneficiary survey and case studies, and assessing additionality and value for money. Where a full counterfactual was not feasible for a small cohort, we used self-reported additionality and were explicit about the method's limits, setting out recommendations to guide future investment.