Local spending cuts threaten volunteering movement

Wednesday, 19 January 2011

“I am extremely anxious about the reports that cuts in local authority budgets are going to result in the closure of local Volunteer Centres and in hugely damaging reductions in their services,” says Justin Davis Smith. “We are receiving reports from across the country that Volunteer Centres are being threatened by cuts in their core and project funding for the coming financial year.

“I ask local authorities to confirm as clearly and speedily as they can that they will be supporting their local Volunteer Centre for the year ahead.

“I recognise the desperately difficult decisions which local authorities are facing across the range of their services, but I ask them to put to the forefront the vital roles of volunteers and volunteering organisations in the present political and economic situation.

“The role of the local Volunteer Centre is vital in informing and advising local people about volunteering, and in helping local volunteering organisations create and manage new opportunities. They are in greater demand than ever as more people come forward to volunteer and as more people also need the assistance of volunteers.

“If a community loses its Volunteer Centre, it loses the heart-beat and the brain-power which enable the volunteering movement to thrive.

“When I wrote to local authority chief executives in October 2010 urging them to maintain funding for the local volunteering infrastructure, I was reassured how many responded positively, recognising the significance of supporting volunteering.

“But now there is anxiety about how local expenditure decisions will cut funding to Volunteer Centres. We have reports from about 30 Volunteer Centres where the services they provide or their whole future are seriously threatened by current local spending plans.”

Government’s local infrastructure fund

“I worry for the impact on the Government’s plans for a fund to support the local volunteering infrastructure”, says Justin Davis Smith. “The Green Paper on Giving brought the great news of a fund of £42.5 million across four years to support the local volunteering infrastructure. This fund would offer local Volunteer Centres the means of enhancing their services for local communities and continuing to modernise, and I very much welcomed this new thinking. But now I am worried that exciting opportunities will be lost where Volunteer Centres will be closing down before the new fund comes into effect.”

Increased demand on Volunteer Centres

In the past year, demand for the services of local Volunteer Centres increased dramatically: in 2009-10 the mean number of enquiries for a Volunteer Centre was 1,574, a 26 per cent increase from 2008-09 and 64 per cent up on 2007-08.

Among the people assisted, Volunteer Centres are particularly successful at engaging with people who are in priority groups for greater involvement in volunteering: 41 per cent of enquiries were from young people under 25; 30 per cent from unemployed people seeking work and 28 per cent from ethnic groups other than white, during 2009-10.

Volunteer Centres are also at the hub of the wider networks of support for volunteering. Overall, the network links in with approximately 75,000 volunteer involving organisations.

Local authorities are the main source of funds for Volunteer Centres. Of the 250 Volunteer Centres in membership of Volunteering England, approximately 90 per cent receive funding directly from local government. Overall, half their funding comes from local authorities (including LAAs and LSPs).

Website to collect information on local expenditure

From Monday (24 January) Volunteering England is joining with NCVO, Compact Voice, ACEVO, NCVYS and other partners in launching a sector-wide open source website to assemble the evidence on public expenditure decisions affecting the voluntary and community sector.

Notes to Editor

• For media enquires please contact Mike Locke on 020 7520 8930 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

• Volunteering England is an independent charity and membership organisation, committed to supporting, enabling and celebrating volunteering in all its diversity.

• Our work links policy, research, innovation, good practice and programme management in the involvement of volunteers. We have a diverse membership drawn from the public, private and voluntary and community sectors. These include national charities, further and higher education, NHS Trusts, arts and sports organisations, Volunteer Centres and local community projects. On behalf of our members and the wider volunteering movement, we work with local and central Government, national agencies and infrastructure partnerships.

• Volunteering England is at the centre, bringing ideas and people together, developing better networks and structures, and initiating projects to support volunteering in a wide range of fields, such as health and social care, sport and employer-supported volunteering.

• To find out more, visit: www.volunteering.org.uk

19 January 2011