The Big Society & Small Minded Insurance Companies

Food and politics are not a happy combination so we don’t want to get into whether PM David Cameron’s Big Society agenda is officially a Good Idea or a Bad Idea in political terms - but we certainly appreciate it’s a seriously difficult idea to put into practice.

A few months ago we started an initiative with a local prison to take on inmates approaching the end of their sentence to work at the COOK Kitchen. After their release, if they proved up to the job (and without exception they were excellent), we would offer them a full-time role. We saw this as an opportunity to help them make a fresh start and reduce the likelihood of their reoffending, while at the same time finding talented Kitchen workers.

Everything was going smoothly until our insurance company decided that having the inmates working in the Kitchen contravened the terms of our cover. We tried to reason with them but to no avail and were left with no choice but to suspend the initiative. According to the letter of our contract, our insurer was no doubt correct. But the spirit of the initiative required a small helping of trust and generosity from all concerned. The potential social gain (offenders integrated back into society, earning wages, paying taxes), far outweighed the risk.

To succeed, a Big Society needs broad minds and generous spirits. The problem, as David Cameron is discovering, is that too many of us behave like small-minded insurance companies.