London Vision for Volunteering

Since May last year I have led the ‘London Vision for Volunteering‘ programme and in March 2025 we launched the final report and its 36 recommendations.

I am so proud of this work. Not just because I think it has produced some great recommendations that act as a blueprint for developing volunteering across the capital, but particularly as it has been a true collaboration that has brought input from every single borough in London. All 33! The report has a really good mixture of both practical and strategic recommendations. It is both ambitious and realistic about how change needs to come about .

Every person who writes a report such as this must think their report is really going to bring about change, but it is extremely rare that one ever does. Even where there has been lots of positive feedback and enthusiasm, like their has for this piece of work, there is still the strong likelihood of it being both praised and then forgotten about.

I built into the methodology some factors that might help its success. The first was to release the draft report with its recommendations for consultation. This is mainly because I have contributed to reports in the past, through surveys and interviews, and sometimes have been disappointed when I saw the final report that it had ignored or misunderstood the points I had made.

For this report, we published the draft for just over 7 weeks, during December 2024 and January 2025, and spent a lot of work encouraging people and organisations to give their feedback and thoughts. We actively encouraged people to tell us if we had something wrong, forgotten something or had made recommendations that were too weak or too strong, then we wanted to hear about it.

As well as being a good process to get some good recommendations this also means that lots of people, organisations and businesses rightly feel they have part ownership of this report. So, I hope this means they will help share it and promote it but also it means it is harder for anyone else to criticise as the report and its recommendations are not my individual personal recommendations, these are the recommendations that have come from the expertise and experience of stakeholders and Londoners across the capital.

The report also had a great steering group of expert and engaged volunteer stakeholders, the London Volunteering Strategy Group (LVSG). They have been a huge help in all areas of the report and I led meetings with them each month as the programme developed.

I have also been careful to add a caveat at the start of the report by stating that it is not meant to be comprehensive and all knowing, but a bold confident step forward that will develop volunteering across the capital, but needs more input, research and, importantly, oversight to implement the recommendations. This seems sensible and realistic and life and the world changes and so these recommendations are likely to evolve and develop, they are not written in stone. As we implement them we may realise further issues and/or come up with better ways of realising our objectives. That’s all fine with me.

I have also received many nice comments about how comprehensive the report it is, which is great to read but also a relief as we have such a knowledgeable sector who can be quick to say, “but you forgot about …”. Touch wood, I have not received such a comment yet.

Another very unusual, for me, area of work to make this report more successful is to get some high profile people to read it and add some quotes/comments. This was very outside my comfort zone as I do not move in such exalted social circles. I had to find and navigate between the managers, agents and publicists of these celebrities. It made me very glad that I am not famous as I would not want to need such people in my life.

Most of the high profile people contacted did not respond. This could be just that I did not reach the right person but suspect mostly it was that this was not of interest to them or at least their representatives believed it was not of interest? Some did reply thought, via their people, to say it was a pass or not for them or they were focusing on a particular charity. I have no complaints as I do not know them and by contacting them I was adding to the long list of demands they must get from earnest people and organisations asking for help.

It would be bad form to say who said no, but I hope he does not mind as I thought Sir Ian McKellen gave a great and completely valid response for not contributing. He wrote to me, ‘Please forgive my not sending you a comment to be quoted in your report. I just don’t feel qualified.’ That is a totally fair response and very kind and humble that he did respond at all.

Sir Ian did highlight that I was asking people to comment on what is probably a quite technical issue and so it is unsurprising that many people did not respond. I am pleased to say that we did get some contributions from some great people who took the time to read it and write a comment that could be published:

• Sir Stephen Fry
• Dwayne Fields (Chief Scout)
• Dr Debbie Weekes-Bernard (Deputy London Mayor for Communities and Social Justice)
• Andy Haldane (CEO of Royal Society of Arts and former Chief Economist at Bank of England)
• Margaret Casely-Hayford CBE (Lawyer, business person and Patron of Girls Brigade Ministries)
• Fekky (Lewisham rapper and founder of CC Foundation)
• Lord Gus O’Donnell

I am unashamedly proud of the report and give the hugest of massive thanks to everyone who has contributed to it.