Small Charity Sector

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on securing this debate and on his kind words about Noreen Oliver. I had the pleasure of meeting Noreen when I was first elected. The legacy she leaves in north Staffordshire is phenomenal. Noreen’s Recovery Lounge, which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, is in Fenton Manor in my constituency. It is a wonderful place, which provides the opportunity for people in alcohol and drug addiction recovery to spend meaningful time with other people and acquire work experience and skills. That is something that we should all aspire to.

I commend to the debate the recent report from Voluntary Action Stoke on Trent, the infrastructure organisation expertly led by Lisa Healings and her team, that brings together multiple parts of the charitable sector, offering the support and guidance they need. The report points out that there are 396 registered charities operating in Stoke-on-Trent, spending a collective amount of £144.7 million. That is a phenomenal amount of investment into my city, and its value is huge. That money is being spent to prevent much greater demands on other services. It closes the gaps in some communities, to give people the life chances and opportunities they would not otherwise have.

That money cannot come from the public sector alone. Nicky Twemlow, the newly appointed chief executive of the YMCA, founded the Made in Stoke network, which brings together people who have a physical or social connection to Stoke-on-Trent, trying to ensure that they can use their philanthropic aims to fund small charities in Stoke. It is a matchmaking service that is having a real benefit.

Although there are many wonderful things in Stoke that I could talk about, I just want to touch briefly on three changes that would help. One issue is the short-term cycle of funding; charities often tell me that they get funding for one or two years. By the time they have stood up a project, it is time to start shutting it down again. By the time they have recruited staff, they are worried about redundancy costs. Another concerns large contracts for commissioned services by the third sector from public sector bodies, but the value of the contract is so large that small charities are shut out. Unless they can offer huge swathes of different services, they are unable to get a look in. The big charities mentioned by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green get all the spoils, when a coalition of smaller charities could deliver a service more effectively and with more focus on a community but they cannot compete on the price point.

My final point, which I want to raise briefly, is around the complex nature of the needs that too many of these charities are meeting. In Stoke we have lots of good charities, such as Chit Chat 4U, Birches Head Get Growing or Step-Up Stoke CIC. They are often trying to meet one need, but that is spread across multiple phases. If there were a way the Government could help with multiple needs assessments that allow charities to work collectively, it would be a massive boon for my city.

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[Stephanie Peacock]

I absolutely recognise those volunteers and staff members, who often do huge amounts of work to deliver amazing outcomes. The hon. Gentleman makes an incredibly important point, as always. I know that volunteers across the country dedicate their time—week in, week out.

If the House will indulge me, I want to share an example from my own area of Barnsley. Last Saturday, I took part in the Barnsley parkrun along with my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley North (Dan Jarvis). It is a brilliant initiative, organised by volunteers every week. We ran the parkrun alongside Oliver Smith, who is just nine years old. He is running nine marathons in four months to raise money for the Brain Tumour Charity following his dad’s diagnosis. Oliver’s commitment to fundraising and raising awareness is incredibly inspiring, and I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to all his amazing efforts. I was also pleased last week to visit a small charity in Barnsley, the Barnsley Hospital Charity, which has run a number of campaigns over the years and is currently raising funds particularly for breast cancer care.

My Department wants to do what it can to support volunteering. We have commissioned an open data initiative that will help break down barriers for more people to get involved in the causes that mean the most to them. It will make it easier for small charities to advertise volunteering opportunities and expand their reach, generating further support and interest for their work in their local areas.

[Gareth Snell]

One thing that might help is if there was a settled model for how small charities could quantify volunteer hours to use as a bank against matched funding. Some charities in my patch tell me that they have lots of social value but no cash, and when they go for matched funding, the funders want to see an income stream, not necessarily the other things they have. If there was a way that everyone recognised and supported of quantifying those other things, it could free up income from philanthropic organisations to be match funded against time, assets or skills.

[Stephanie Peacock]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point; the young volunteers were also talking to me about that data point yesterday.

One example is that the DCMS launched the voluntary, community, and social enterprise business hub last year, alongside the VCSE Crown representative. The hub contains a host of resources intended to support civil society organisations in finding and bidding for public funding. That is especially important for smaller charities with fewer resources to dedicate to seeking out such funding, and it is a vital source of information in our mission to encourage more civil society organisations into public sector contracts. Obviously, however, data is helpful across the board.