NHS Volunteer Workforce Data Collection

Volunteers provide additional capacity and flexibility in how services are delivered and well-designed and managed volunteering programmes improve satisfaction and wellbeing ratings for staff, as well as patients.

There is a commitment to widen participation and improve the diversity of our volunteering population to ensure that volunteers are representative of the communities' organisations serve.

Data will provide a baseline to drive improvement in equality of access and opportunity. 

The NHS Volunteer Taskforce Report recommended that NHS England should develop consistent and appropriate measures to track the number of NHS volunteers to include number of volunteers, volunteering hours and diversity data. The Taskforce also recommended that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) should explore ways to track the number of care volunteers as part of workforce returns.

The data will be used to share good practice and monitor and assess delivery of a number of commitments made regarding volunteering, equalities and resilience as follows:  

• The NHS England » NHS Long Term  Plan - Staff and patients will benefit from a doubling of the number of volunteers also helping across the NHS 
• The Equality Objectives Programme NHS England - To implement a framework for monitoring the number of volunteers across the NHS by reference to protected characteristics and any other relevant characteristics. [2023/24 and 2024/25]  
• NHS Long Term Workforce Plan Leveraging the Impact of Volunteers  

Under section 259(1)(a) of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, this Notice is served in accordance with the procedure published as part of the NHS England duty under section 259(8) on the following persons:

• acute non-foundation trust  
• acute foundation trust  
• NHS foundation trust 
• community trust 
• mental health trust  
• ambulance trust

Under section 259(5) of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 the organisation types specified above must comply with the form, manner and period requirements as detailed in the Data Provision Notice and Requirements Specification.

NHS England has been directed by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care under section 254 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012; to establish and operate a system for the collection and analysis of the information specified for this service. The direction and accompanying requirements specification are published on the NHS England website: Workforce information Directions 2019

This information is required by NHS England under section 259(1)(a) of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

In line with section 259(5) of the Act, all organisations in scope, in England, must comply with the requirement and provide information to NHS England in the form, manner and period specified in this Data Provision Notice.

This Notice is issued in accordance with the procedure published as part of an NHS England duty under section 259(8).

Period of the collection These data will be submitted quarterly. Submitting organisations will be required to collect data from 01/04/2024 onwards. This DPN mandates data submitters to disclose the ‘number of volunteers’ from 01/04/23. The expected full compliance date for’ hours of volunteers have given’ and ‘diversity data’ is 31/03/2025.