KENT and Medway need more social businesses that want to make a difference to people’s lives.

That’s the message from Margaret Malpas, a successful businesswoman who has turned her attention to social enterprise (SE).

Social enterprises are growing across the country, with an estimated half a million. But the county has been slower to join the trend.

However, things are changing, with around 17 members of a new Social Enterprise Action Learning programme founded by Mrs Malpas.

"We are on the threshold of really big things," she said. "I think social enterprise is where Fairtrade was a few years ago. It’s a very exciting time."

Social enterprises range from businesses that help ex-offenders and drug addicts back into work to a charity’s trading arm.

In Kent, Minster-based Marsh Electrical, Kent Film and Video Makers, Focus to Work, Bluebell Physio Centre, Folkestone Sure Start Partnership and Whitstable Volunteer Centre all have a social as well as a commercial purpose.

Stewart Marsh, who set up Marsh Electrical with wife Esther, plans to take on ex-offenders. He pays frequent visits to Sheppey prisons.

As a committed Christian he believes it is the right thing to do, even though he accepts there could be risks to his business.

He says that clients will be informed before putting an ex-offender on their job.

"You’ve got to put yourself out almost to a position of vulnerability," he said. "If you feel it’s your calling, that’s what you’ve got to do."

Mrs Malpas, a former personnel boss, sold her training business some time ago to focus on social enterprise.

She was attracted to the subject by the School for Social Enterprise founded by Sir Michael Young in London.

"I was just so bowled over by the passion that I was sucked in," says the married mother of two from Hartley, near Gravesend.

SE was given a boost by Jeff Skoll, founder of the eBay website, who paid for a social enterprise department at Oxford University.

It hosts the annual World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship which this year was attended by actor Robert Redford and former US presidential candidate Al Gore.

Social enterprises are more common in deprived areas of the country.

"Kent is not as deprived as some areas although it does have pockets of deprivation in places such as Shepway and Thanet," said Mrs Malpas.

"'This releases energy to create social enterprises."

She acknowledges that SE has often had a "touchy-feely" image, but insists that SE businesses must make a profit, although that is not their ultimate aim.

"It would be wrong to see them in any way as less commercial," she says.

"I’d like to see a thriving community of social enterprises in Kent and Medway, contributing as much as other businesses and not regarded as second class."