North Lincolnshire Credit Union

 Background

The North Lincs Credit Union, based in Scunthorpe, encourages its 500 members to save regularly, provides loans to members and offers them help and support to manage their financial affairs.   

As their European funding ended in March 2006, the North Lincs Credit Union is now run by its 22 volunteers - including 15 extremely ‘hands on’ board members and occasional work placements.  The shop is open Monday to Friday 9.00am - 4.30pm.  Members can save whatever they can afford - £5, £1 or 50p a week – the only requirement is that they save regularly.  They can also apply for a loan at very low rates of interest.

Support and Advice

When Jane met Donna Murphy, Social Enterprise Co-ordinator for Social Enterprise Humber, at a networking meeting they discussed this problem.

Jane explained that to ensure a quality service for its members more of the volunteers should understand where the money was actually going and what was involved in each transaction.  She said it was really important for North Lincs Credit Union to have a strong, well-trained volunteer base.  These people would then become the trainers for the new volunteers!

“Credit unions not only encourage local people to work together for the community but they are also a great opportunity for those involved in the day to day running of them to update or learn new skills.” said Jane.

Donna offered North Lincs Credit Union a learning grant to undertake the learning.  Jane contacted Sue Davenport from the Leeds Credit Union and arranged for two sessions in Scunthorpe on Kesho’s Curtains financial management system – the system used by credit unions.

Using her laptop and a screen Sue has already delivered the first of two training sessions to all 22 members of the team at once. The Curtains package is already accessed every day by the volunteers including sending out birthday cards to members with their statements enclosed!

“Social Enterprise Humber was delighted to help”, says Donna.   “It is so important for organisations like the North Lincs Credit Union to look at ways they can develop their skills and expertise so they can offer a quality service to their members and work towards a secure future.”

The Future

Although they do not offer a debt counselling service themselves, they feel they could offer a better support service to their members if they knew more about the range of services and advice that are offered by a number of organisations to people who may be facing financial difficulties.

The team at North Lincs Credit Union want to provide the best service and support they can to their members and will continue to work with Social Enterprise Humber to ensure that they do that.

Social Enterprise Humber is a Business Link Humber project sponsored by Yorkshire Forward and the European Regional Development Fund which aims to develop a strong and financially sustainable Social Enterprise sector through the following objectives:

• Growing bigger, better, more sustainable and more effective individual social enterprises.
• Creating new social enterprises with a focus on sustainability and quality.
• Developing a bigger market environment for social enterprises, and raising the profile and capability of the sector to deliver high quality services for the private and public sectors.
• Stimulating partnership developments with all sectors, public, private and voluntary/community.
• Facilitating segmented network activity to encourage peer support, information exchange and informal learning.
• Raising the profile and quality of sustainable social enterprise support within the sub-region, and building capacity, skills and understanding within the support infrastructure.

For further information contact     
Emma Buttrick
        Social Enterprise Administrator
        Business Link Humber
        Tel 01724 291526
        Fax 01724 291511
        Mob 07795605228
        www.sehumber.co.uk