Case Study: Provide Community

Often, the biggest challenges faced by employee owned businesses aren’t those identified by horizon scanning. It’s the trials and opportunities that aren’t predicted that can have the biggest impact. That’s the case for Provide Community, a community interest company (CIC) who took on a major community equipment contract in North London, acting out of necessity, not any kind of long-term planning.

NRS, the previous service provider, had been a private company that fell into liquidation two years after bidding too low for the North London contract. Backed by venture capital, the focus had been only on profit. As can be expected, this approach was unsustainable. The myth of perpetual growth stalled, and things reached critical levels. 

“They were just looking to take money out,” explains Mark Heasman, Group Chief Executive of Provide Community. “There was no engagement with staff, no real interest in the service, and people were treated like drones.”

The shift to a commercial provider had originally been intended to remedy the service’s slow, difficult to move forward nature with more energy and efficiency. Instead, it created a different set of problems that compounded over time. When NRS collapsed, the situation became urgent. 

This is a service that delivers thousands of items of mobility equipment including profiling beds, commodes, hoists, and basic equipment into North London every single day. These are items that allow people to leave hospital or stay independent in their own homes.

So, when that service stops working, the impact is immediate and has a demonstrable impact on thousands of people across the community.

“They were stuck,” says Mark. “The councils needed someone who could step in and keep things moving.”

A Short Window to Act

Despite the need to move swifty, Provide Community wasn’t arriving on scene without experience. About eighteen months before, the business helped Croydon County Council set up Provide Equipment Hub, an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) mutual focussed on community equipment. Provide Community holds a 49% stake in the mutual and three of its directors sit on the board. As well as offering a successful blueprint to replicate, it also provided a tangible case study of Provide Community’s success in this space. 

“Essex Carers Limited (ECL) called us so Provide Community could benefit from the legwork that had already taken place and to reduce reputational damage for ECL, as it was forced to withdraw after six weeks of negotiations and preparations,” says Mark.

This kicked off rapid action inside Provide Community. The business got the board together, undertook due diligence, and explored how they could mobilise. A decision to salvage elements of the former service to create a new one was made within a matter of days.

But, of course, it wasn’t without risk, as Mark explains: “If we’d got it wrong, it would have been a disaster. But we were focused on getting it over the line.”

The eight councils that formed the North London Equipment Partnership were also taking a risk. Despite the success seen with the mutual established in Croydon, Provide Community was still relatively new to the community equipment market. But it was operating as an employee owned social enterprise that made a difference and helped allay any worries the council might have had. 

“That really appealed to them,” says Mark. “We reinvest our surplus back into services and communities and are proud of our social value. This ethos aligned with what they wanted.”

Everything moved into gear and accelerated as soon as the decision had been made. Within days a new board was put together, while teams from across Provide Community were pulled into a task force to get the service up and running. As Mark put it, “It was a case of pivoting the whole organisation to make this happen.”

At the same time, conversations with the eight councils moved forward quickly, helped by strong relationships with senior people on both sides.

On September 22 2025, Provide Community signed the contract and the new service delivered and collected their first items on October 3 2025. The service ramped up quickly and by January 2026 all aspects of the service were operational and working at scale. Not only were the eight councils fully on board, but the service has also been improving week on week since launch driven in no small part by employee ownership.

A Shift in Culture

A significant enabler of success here was responding at pace, this was particularly the case for recruitment. 157 staff were recruited within a three-week period in late September (mainly from staff made redundant from the former service). 

But the environment they were coming from had been very different. “Morale was low,” says Nicola Yarnall, Chair of the Council of Governors at Provide Community. “It was very focused on the bottom line. There wasn’t much interest in customer service beyond the basics.”

From the very beginning of the process, Provide Community took a different approach, as Nicola explains: “We said, we can do this. But we need to listen to the people working in this service. They know what good looks like.”

That meant building the service with input from the people delivering it, rather than imposing a model from above.

But, for many of the new staff, one of the biggest changes was becoming part of an employee owned business. At Provide Community, employees are members. They have a voice in how the business is run, including representation through a Council of Governors.

“We’ve currently got twenty-nine Governors across the organisation,” says Nicola. “We try to make sure we’re representing different parts of the business.”

A space was deliberately held open for someone from the new service, ensuring that their voice was represented and heard immediately at that level. 

Employees can express interest in becoming a Governor, go through an interview process, and take on the role alongside their day job. It’s supported, structured, and seen as a development opportunity that provides experience at board level and working alongside the executive team. 

The sense of ownership was fully visible at the launch event in January 2026, marking the launch of the new Provide Community owned and operated service. As Nicola puts it: “The culture in the room was really strong. People were proud of what they’d built in such a short space of time. They hadn’t felt part of it before. Now they did.”

Provide Community’s strapline is ‘It’s not just our job, it’s our business’. That’s been emblematic of the shift those 157 new members of staff who joined through this contract underwent. 

Those staff are now able to ask questions and get involved; they’ve got representation and a feedback loop. There are also practical benefits, from community grant funding to development opportunities. But more than that, it’s about being part of something.

“At the launch, you could really feel it,” says Nicola. “People felt supported and included. And after everything that had come before, that was a significant change.”

Improving the Service

Alongside the cultural shift, there were also practical changes, with recycling equipment emerging as a stand-out area. Historically, recycling was of little to no concern to the service under private ownership. Yet, recycling equipment saves money for the people funding the service as well as providing a better way of working. 

More broadly, the focus has been on delivering a high-quality service, rather than simply doing the minimum required. “It’s about listening and asking what good looks like, then building the service around that,” explains Nicola. 

All of this has combined to form a blueprint of repeatable success with many noticing the success of the transition. 

“Other councils are looking at what we’ve done and asking how they can do something similar,” says Mark. “They’re looking at their current contracts and thinking about how to move away from them.”

Part of that interest is down to the model itself, as Mark explains: “There aren’t many organisations like us. We’re a social enterprise, we’re employee owned, and we’re operating at scale.”

That combination is becoming a differentiator, both in winning work and attracting people. It’s helping with recruitment because people are interested in working for a social enterprise where they have a stake and a say, where their voice has value, and they’re contributing to better communities rather than serving bottom lines. 

Nicola adds that retention is also stronger compared to some NHS organisations. “Our vacancy rates are better,” she says. “But we could probably do more to talk about what employee ownership actually means in practice.”

Future Proofing

For Provide Community, the contract is part of a broader direction. Despite being a social enterprise and employee owned, growth is still very much front and centre of the business’ strategy – especially as the wider healthcare landscape continues to change.

Plenty of uncertainty hangs around the NHS’s forthcoming transformation plan which will likely dramatically change how healthcare is delivered across the UK. In the wake of significant changes, Provide Community are fortified for survival and can pivot into other areas. In this way they’re protecting their employee ownership and wider operating model through diversification. 

“We’re diversifying into different areas,” says Mark. “If the NHS changes how it delivers services, we want to be in a position where we can adapt.”

Provide Community continue to make the best of employee ownership by meeting with other likeminded and similarly structured healthcare CICs – including fellow eoa Trustee member City Health Care Partnership. As with everything the business undertakes, community comes first. And judging by Provide Community’s continuing performance, that’s a recipe for success.