A FORMER Riddlesden woman who heads up an organisation providing interpreting and translation services to the community has attended a reception at 10 Downing Street.

Liz Weatherill, managing director of Enable2, was invited to the event as part of celebrations marking a milestone 100 mutuals now delivering improved local public services in England.

The Cabinet Office staged the reception to highlight the way mutuals are transforming communities.

Mrs Weatherill, 48, who lived at Riddlesden in the 1970s and 80s and is a former pupil of St Joseph's School in Ingrow, said: “It felt great to be invited to number ten.

“It’s wonderful that the government has been so supportive of people’s efforts to create social enterprises.

“It means that all surpluses achieved by the social enterprises are reinvested back into society.”

Enable2, based in Bradford, was launched in 2011 having split from NHS Bradford and Airedale.

It now provides interpretation support to a variety of clients including NHS organisations, charities, and solicitors in the Bradford district, Yorkshire and other parts of the country. It has interpreters who speak and write 54 different languages.

Enable2 is working with GPs to deliver a video interpreting service to help the NHS save costs, and it offers a free training programme called Enable2 Work which targets people aiming to gain a job within the public sector.

The organisation left the NHS with six employees – it now has 16 and a bank of more than 250 self-employed interpreters.

In 2010, there were only nine mutuals in England. Now, the 100 mutuals deliver 14 different public services totalling around £2 billion, employ more than 35,000 people, and have helped create 3,000 additional jobs over the last two years alone.

The Downing Street reception featured a cross-section of CEOs from mutuals across the country.