Hertfordshire Council misses target for volunteer hours in 2023

THE amount of time given-up by volunteers to support the work of the county council has decreased, councillors have been told.

In the past year volunteers have played important and wide-ranging roles alongside the county council, from the delivery of ‘safe and well’ visits to the welcoming of arrivals from Ukraine.

They have also led anti-arson patrols and initiatives to highlight fly-tipping sites.

But data presented to a meeting of the county council’s resources and performance cabinet panel on Thursday (July 6) suggests the time being given by volunteers is going down.

Latest available figures shows that in the three months between October and December last year (2022) just 430 volunteer hours were recorded.

And that’s significantly below the council’s 1600 hour quarterly target, which was set before the pandemic – equivalent to 6400 volunteer hours a year.

The data does show that around 1100 volunteer hours were recorded by the council in the three months between January and March 2022.

But overall in 2022 there were only around 3000 volunteer hours recorded. And that’s less than half of the annual target.

In the report submitted to the cabinet panel, officers point to a general decline in volunteering in the wake of the covid pandemic.

“Research has noted the impact of COVID on volunteering with almost 40 per cent of organisations reporting a decline in the amount of time contributed by volunteers,” says the report.

“Civil Society, a forum for voluntary and community organisations, has similarly noted a decline of almost 25 per cent in the number of volunteers are charity shops.”