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Where has volunteering gone? Comments on the new 10 Year Health Plan for England

06 July 2025

By
Jurgen Grotz

‘Fit for the Future: 10 Year Health Plan for England’ was published 03 July 2025, announcing ‘three big shifts’ on how the NHS works. However, one dramatic shift remained unannounced: losing sight of volunteering. While the absence of recognition of volunteer involvement in the plans for the NHS is not evidence of the absence of volunteering itself, this omission is a clear and devastating illustration of how far volunteers have slipped below the radar in the thinking and understanding of policy makers.

Volunteers have become invisible to policy makers

The word ‘volunteer’ only appears on two of the 167 pages of the plan, and one of those as a complete misunderstanding of the difference between ‘research participants’ and ‘volunteers’ (page 127). On page 33, the cursory and inaccurately summarising mention must be offensive to the many volunteers in the NHS in obscuring the hundreds of roles they play beyond being subsumed into ‘neighbourhood services’. Worse is its suggestion that solely providing an online platform might be the solution to ensuring effective volunteer involvement.

“We also know volunteers can play an important role in supporting neighbourhood services and we will help neighbourhood teams draw on this through a new central platform for NHS volunteers, launching later this year.” (UK Government 2025: 33)

We can compare this to the last 10 Year Plan (NHS England 2019: 90) where volunteering had a separate section, even if short and overambitious. In stating its intention to double the number of volunteers, it recognised the contributions of volunteers and the role volunteer involvement already plays. Only two years ago, the recommendations contained in the report of the NHS Volunteering Taskforce (NHS England 2023,) for all its flaws and its unrelenting transactional approach, illustrated vividly how far the ambitions contained in the last 10 year plan had been translated into practice, yet also how far short they still fell.  Crucially the Taskforce included a recommendation that policy makers should learn from the pandemic.

“NHS England and DHSC should use the learning from the pandemic to ensure they can stand up appropriate national volunteer and VCSE support, swiftly, in an emergency.” NHS England 2023

We can also compare ‘Fit for the Future’ to the levels of recognition volunteering receives in Scotland where NHS Scotland is a Stakeholder in delivering Scotland’s Volunteering Action Plan Scottish Government (2022), which engages broadly and in depth with the complexities of involving volunteers.

There are real dangers of ignorance

It is difficult to draw any other conclusions for volunteering in the vision of today’s NHS Health Planners than that policy makers for the UK Government are broadly ignorant of the realities of the role and contribution of volunteer involvement in the NHS around the UK and particularly so in England. That not only clearly disrespects the contribution of volunteers but potentially will also lead to real and devastating health impacts, in being unable to consider the role of volunteer involvement in crises, repeating major mistakes and missteps seen repeatedly seen since the 1970s (Grotz 2021a). It is particularly shocking that nothing has been learned from the pandemic about the role of volunteer involvement in the NHS when community-led volunteering could be seen to demonstrate energies, creativity in great numbers across the four UK nations, but hasty government attempts to coopt volunteering to support top-down led support withered on the vine (Grotz 2021b).

Grotz, J (2021a) ‘not under the direction of any authority wielding the power of the State’: a critical assessment of top-down attempts to foster volunteering in the UK, Institute for Volunteering Research. Available from https://assets.uea.ac.uk/f/185167/x/9dfa5d7d49/2021-06-13-ivr-policy-paper-_-a-critical-assessment-of-top_down-attempts-to-foster-volunteering-in-the-uk.pdf [Accessed 06 July 2025].

Grotz, J (2021b) Organisers’ and volunteers’ accounts from mutual aid associations in Kensington and Chelsea during 2020, Institute for Volunteering Research. Available from https://assets.uea.ac.uk/f/185167/x/bd65b404f0/ivr-working-paper-mutual-aid-v3-11-04-2021-jlg.pdf [Accessed 06 July 2025].

NHS England (2019) The NHS long term plan, NHS England. Available from https://www.longtermplan.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/nhs-long-term-plan-version-1.2.pdf [Accessed 05 July 2025].

NHS England (2023) NHS Volunteering Taskforce: Report and Recommendations, NHS England. Available from https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/PRN1596-volunteering-taskforce-report.pdf [Accessed 06 July 2025].

Scottish Government (2022) Scotland’s Volunteering Action Plan, Scottish Government. Available from: https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/strategy-plan/2022/06/scotlands-volunteering-action-plan/documents/scotlands-volunteering-action-plan/scotlands-volunteering-action-plan/govscot%3Adocument/scotlands-volunteering-action-plan.pdf [Accessed 05 July 2025].

UK Government (2025) Fit for the Future: 10 Year Health Plan for England, His Majesty’s Stationery Office. Available from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6866387fe6557c544c74db7a/fit-for-the-future-10-year-health-plan-for-england.pdf [Accessed 05 July 2025].

Let us know what you think by emailing info.ivr@uea.ac.uk

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