Heather Hall BEM

Heather Hall BEM’s entire working life has been dedicated to helping people in need. Having spent most of her career in Health and social care, she co-founded the now multi-award-winning social enterprise The Usual Place in 2015.

One of the first Graduate Adult Nursing students at Glasgow College of Technology in 1983, Heather was keen to continue her studies and expand into mental health nursing. She did some staffing in Dumfries, then moved to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary to train as a Mental Health Nurse.

Heather would go on to hit her stride as a Staff Nurse at Kingseat Hospital, then Deputy Charge Nurse in an acute admissions ward.

After a few years and three children, Heather moved into the voluntary sector. This led to the next stage in Heather's career - teaching first aid with the Red Cross, working with Alzheimer's Scotland, with the Richmond Fellowship Scotland, Aspire Housing and Personal Development Services in Glasgow.

Through all this, Heather was honing her leadership skills. She would go on to work with the Care Commission, travelling around Scotland supporting the development of good quality health and social care.

“After I left the Care Commission, I took over as development manager at a representative organisation for disabled people. I realised quite quickly that it wasn't representative at all, and it lacked the voice of young people. To really make a difference, I needed to involve the younger generation. What we heard was that they wanted jobs - they wanted careers.

“So, we set the recommendations of young people by talking to them about what [their careers] might look like. We looked at what the job opportunities were locally, and they suggested that hospitality might be a way forward.”

The Usual Place was born as a result of this consultation – a social enterprise and café, staffed by dedicated values-based staff and volunteers led by young disabled people,  providing employment and training in the hospitality industry to young people with disabilities or additional support needs.

At the heart of The Usual Place is a recognition of the need for young disabled people to have a place in which they feel represented in the workplace.

“One of my fondest memories, I think, is of a young man just after the pandemic. He’d had quite a challenging start at life, and he struggled a bit at the start when he came to The Usual Place, but he did amazingly well. Over time, he found that he was really liking working with those who were less able than himself.

“When he graduated from The Usual Place with his hospitality qualification, he said, ‘Heather, what I really want to do is go into care - I want to care for people’.

“I still knew the managers at the Richmond Fellowship Scotland, so we went down and I said, ‘This young man has got so many skills and abilities, and I think this is an opportunity for him’.

"Once they took him on, at the beginning and end of his shifts he would come in and let us know how it was going. Once we enabled him to transition into that job, I didn’t hear from him for a while, and I thought he must have got overwhelmed instead of coming to speak to me.

“I met him coming out of Morrison’s and I said, ‘I haven’t seen you for a week’.

He said, ‘I know Heather, I don’t need you anymore.’

“That was just the most fabulous moment. He came back to us just after the pandemic to tell us how proud he was to have worked through it as a key worker and to have gained his qualifications.”

In 2024, after nine years as CEO of Inspired Community Enterprise Trust, Heather made the decision to retire, though she plans to contribute to staff training on a voluntary basis.

To date, The Usual Place has received 16 awards, including the NHS Healthy Living Award and the SQA Star Awards Partnership of the Year. Additionally, in December 2025, Heather was awarded the BEM in recognition of her work at The Usual Place and her contribution to Dumfries