Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment his Department has made of the economic value of formal volunteering in each year since 2010.

The Community Life Survey measures the levels of formal volunteering each year. The trend since 2013 for people volunteering formally at least once a month is:

Formal volunteering was measured using a different methodology before this date, and is therefore not comparable to data from 2013 onwards.

The DCMS Economic Estimates for 2016 (published on gov.uk) measure the value added from both formal and informal volunteering at £32.0bn. Separately, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) publish Satellite Accounts on their website which provide their own estimates for the value of formal volunteering between 2010-2015.

We are committed to increasing the quality and quantity of social action opportunities available, regardless of the amount of time given by individuals. Our funds and programmes are not specifically designed to increase the number of full time social action opportunities available, and as such, we do not collect data on the duration of the social action activities provided.