Outsourcing company Serco has signed a deal with a social enterprise to help it run a troubled healthcare service in Suffolk.

Bromley Healthcare, a £45m-a-year community interest company which span out of the NHS, has agreed to support the running of Suffolk Community Healthcare. Serco signed a three-year deal to run the service in 2012, but has faced difficulties delivering the contract.

A joint statement from the two organisations said they also “intend to join forces to bid for a range of opportunities in community services and integrated care across the UK”.

“Serco are seeking the help of Bromley to make the service better,” said Jonathan Lewis, chief executive of Bromley Healthcare. “They recognise they need a partner that understands community healthcare. It’s a symbolic moment showing the impact social enterprise can have in health.”

Lewis said he hoped that community healthcare could become an area where there was a “sizeable third sector provision”, and that social enterprise spin-outs had already created substantial improvements in services.

Lewis, previously chief executive of social lender the Social Investment Business, said that since he first entered the charity sector he had “wanted to see social enterprise have a share of the market commensurate with its share of the answers”, and that healthcare was an area where he believed this could happen.