41 Accepted

Volunteers are essential to the delivery of community sport.

Conclusion
Volunteers are essential to the delivery of community sport. Across the country, thousands of people give their time to coach, officiate and support grassroots clubs, often sustaining provision that would not otherwise exist. We want everyone to have the chance to volunteer. A greater mix of volunteers should improve community relationships and lead to a more diverse volunteering network which in turn will provide role models to those currently less inclined to attend clubs and groups. A coherent policy framework for volunteering would help strengthen the volunteer workforce and ensure that community sport is better supported and more sustainable. (Conclusion, Paragraph 137)
Government Response Summary
The government welcomed the focus on volunteers, highlighting Sport England's strategy to improve volunteer experience and diversify the workforce, and committed to developing a new national workforce register and exploring an open data standard to streamline volunteer administration.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government Accepted
We welcome the recognition of the role of volunteers and the intention of improving their experience across a number of areas. Sport and physical activity depends on a large workforce, currently 10.5 million volunteers, 2.6 million coaches, and c.600,000 people in paid roles. These people are deployed across 150,000 community sports clubs and beyond, in a sector where 78% of businesses are Small Medium Enterprises (SME’s). Within Sport England’s Uniting the Movement strategy, there is a focus on improving the volunteer experience as well as seeking to diversify the sport and physical activity workforce so it becomes more representative of the communities it serves, as well as meeting changing needs. We agree that the volunteering administration process should be streamlined to reduce the administrative burden on volunteers. For the last three years, Sport England has worked with the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA) to understand the conditions by which the workforce in sport can be governed effectively, and the steps that would be required to develop a national workforce register. DCMS recently collaborated with Sport England and the Open Data Institute (ODI) around developing an open data standard for volunteering opportunities. We are continuing to work to explore how an open data standard may help improve volunteer administration, particularly in identifying ways to make it easier to volunteer and to streamline processes. This includes the development of a new national workforce register.
Addressee Bodies
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Timeline
Recommendation age 0.3 yrs
Report published 20 Apr 2026