Pre-budget report includes plans to recruit millions of volunteers

Howard Lake | 6 December 2005 | News

• Tagged with:
• finance
• Volunteering

In his pre-budget speech yesterday Chancellor Gordon Brown MP announced plans to recruit millions of volunteers, most of them young people, to reinvigorate disadvantaged communities.

Every local authority will receive £500,000 to set up a young people’s fund for distribution by young people on “amenities and activities run by young people”, according to Mr Brown.

The Chancellor had already announced a national youth community service in the March 2005 budget, focused on 16 to 25-year-olds. “It will fund gap years volunteering in Britain and abroad for young people who otherwise could not afford this,” explained Mr Brown.

The plans are the government’s response to the Russell Commission on encouraging volunteering.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.