Reporting data for the Volunteer Data Collection

Trust data will be collected using the online Data Collection Framework (DCF) system.

Trusts will be able to use the DCF to report all data and will be invited to join by email. If you have not received an email or have any issues with accessing the DCF please see information here Data Collections Framework (DCF) support which also includes contact details for the DCF team.

Data will be required to be submitted quarterly, for the previous quarter and FYTD as follows:

• Quarter 1 (April, May, June) Data
• Quarter 2 (July, August, September) Data
• Quarter 3 (October, November, December) Data
• Quarter4 (January, February, March) Data

A quarter is a three-month period. The FYTD covers the period between the beginning of the year (April) and the present. The collection will open on the 1st of the month following the end of the quarter data is being submitted for. Trusts will be required to submit data no later than three weeks (15 working days) after the quarter ends.

For example, for the Quarter 1 2024 data the collection will open Monday 1 July 2024, and will close Monday 22 July . The data will need to be data from 1 April 1 2024 – 30 June 2024.

The Data Collection Framework (DCF) is a secure system.

It is important that the colleagues working in organisations with responsibility for collecting, inputting and/or analysing the raw data are in roles that allow them to review confidential data.

Organisations may wish to speak to their information governance (IG) team to ensure that their processes are compliant with data protection law and in line with local processes.

Organisations need to be clear about:

• what they are monitoring and why
• the Monitoring Officer/s
• where will the information be stored
• how information will be collected
• when and how data will be reviewed¹⁶

To support data quality a number of validations are included within the Data Collection Framework (DCF) as follows:

• all organisations in scope must submit a return – those organisations that do not have volunteers in scope for the collection need to submit a nil return
• as this is a mandatory data collection, all providers in scope should be able to provide the information required. However, to ensure data quality there is an option to disclose that this information is not collected yet for metrics 2 and 3
• NHS England expect full compliance by Q1 25/26
• the total numbers of volunteers (metric 1) must equal the totals for protected characteristics (metric 3), even if that is numbers of volunteers that ‘prefer not to say’ or have not provided the information, and/or the number of volunteers you haven’t collected this information from yet. The only exception is disability where the total number of volunteers should be equal to those that have a disability + those that do not + those that have chosen not to provide this information (by either selecting they prefer not to answer, or by leaving this section of the form blank) + the number of volunteers not yet asked this information
• year to date data cannot be less than data for the quarter
• fields cannot be left blank, a zero (0) must be inputted into fields where you do not have data
• fata cannot equal less than zero (0)
• there can be no decimal places
• maximum values are 10,000
• aAll fields are numeric
• all fields are mandatory

Small number suppressed data will be shared via dashboards which will be publicly available on the NHS England website. Aggregate data - small numbers will be suppressed to ensure individuals cannot be identified to ensure compliance with the UK implementation of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).