TAMAR Grow Local, a community interest company (CIC) promoting sustainable produce based in the Tamar Valley, has been recognised as a leading social enterprise in this year's RBS SE100 annual snapshot of 2014.

Tamar Grow Local is an umbrella organisation with a number of current projects all aimed at improving food security. 

Its activities focus on providing opportunities for local communities to grow their own food, raising awareness of the benefits of local produce and working with commercial growers to increase the availability and consumption of local food and produce to shorten supply chains.

Simon Platten, project manager for Tamar Grow Local, said: 'Since first featuring on the SE100 index, our not-for-profit activities have grown substantially, through collaboration with other local enterprises and with assistance from our funding partners, to include running allotment sites, planting community orchards in the valley and in Plymouth, creating livestock co-operatives and an online farmers' market.

'We are also now working with Plymouth Community Homes and Plymouth City Council to help address food poverty and access to locally grown food in the city.

'We are thrilled to be recognised by the SE100 Index along with so many other exciting social enterprises and will continue using the index to benchmark our progress over the coming years.'

Tamar Grow Local said it had gone from strength to strength and had experienced a 862% growth over the last year.

The organisation works in partnership with local communities, organ-isations, small producers and local landowners to increase the production, sale and consumption of locally grown food, promoting sustainable local produce and working to preserve the Tamar Valley's unique landscape. 

Simon added: 'Our vision is that the Tamar Valley becomes, once again, an area well known for the range and quality of local produce, including food and cut flowers, which have been grown sustainably and are affordable to all who live in the area.

'Also, that the Tamar Valley is able to support local producers to earn a good living.'

The RBS SE100 Index is an online listing of social ventures, ranked and scored according to their growth and social impact. The live market intelligence platform is designed to provide a substantial data resource for investors, commissioners and policymakers as they seek to understand the landscape of the social economy and identify top performers across the UK.

In the annual data snapshot for 2014, registered social enterprises in the South West show an average growth of 109% and a total combined turnover of £720.6-million.

The South West accounts for ten percent of the total registered Index users, with 121 social enterprises on the Index in the region.

Over the past five years, the average growth of enterprises across the Index has been 45%.

The RBS SE100 Index data set is made up of the 1,157 social enterprises with profiles on se100.net, all of which have at least two years worth of financial data, including turnover and profit loss figures.