Let's start with what is genuinely impressive. Across England, hundreds of thousands of people are giving their time, without payment, to run services that their communities depend on. Food banks. Lunch clubs. Community libraries. Mental health support groups. Village hall committees. Informal transport schemes for people without cars.
This is remarkable. It reflects something real and valuable about the communities in which these people live. It should be acknowledged and celebrated.
The Problem
The problem is what it is being asked to do. The voluntary sector in England is not being celebrated as a complement to public services. It is increasingly being relied upon as a substitute for them. And that is a category error with serious consequences.
The National Council for Voluntary Organisations estimates that voluntary and community organisations contribute the equivalent of £2.4 billion in unpaid labour annually. That figure almost certainly understates the reality. But even taking it at face value, it represents a significant transfer of cost from the public purse to private individuals — individuals who are not compensated, not accountable in the way that public services are, and not sustainable in the way that funded institutions can be.
The Sustainability Problem
The people who run these organisations are, for the most part, older. They have the time, the skills and the social networks that come from decades of community involvement. Recruiting younger volunteers is a persistent challenge. The institutional knowledge they hold does not transfer automatically.
"We are not a substitute for public services. We are a complement. But the gap between what we can do and what is needed has been growing for years." — Volunteer coordinator, Lincolnshire
What Should Change
None of this is an argument against volunteering. It is an argument against the policy assumption — rarely stated explicitly, but clearly present in the decisions being made — that the existence of voluntary activity means that statutory services are not needed.
The food bank in the church hall is not evidence that food poverty has been solved. It is evidence that the need is real and that no one else is meeting it. Policymakers who treat the former as a substitute for the latter are making a mistake. It is a mistake that will eventually have consequences that are more expensive than the services they chose not to fund.