The proportion of people who are involved in volunteering increased slightly over the past year, government figures show.
The Community and Engagement Survey, a continuous survey of thousands of people aged 16 and over in England, measures how individuals engage with their community and is the successor to the Community Life Survey, which was discontinued last year.
Latest figures from the CES, covering the period between last October and March this year, show that 18 per cent of respondents said they had taken part in formal volunteering at least once a month in the past 12 months, up from 17 per cent last year.
The proportion who said they had done the same at least once a year was up 2 percentage points to 30 per cent over the same period.
Formal volunteering is defined as giving unpaid help through a group, club or organisation and tends to include set hours and role descriptions.
The figures mean the levels of formal volunteering have bounced back slightly from a record low in 2023/24, when a proportion of 16 per cent was recorded, but remain considerably lower than the high of 27 per cent reached in 2013/14.
The figures show that 25 per cent of respondents said they had carried out informal volunteering at least once a month in the last 12 months, up from 24 per cent a year earlier.
Informal volunteering involves giving unpaid help to people who are not a relative but not through an organisation and could include things like doing shopping for a neighbour.
The proportion of people who said they had done formal or informal volunteering at least once a month in the past 12 months rose from 33 per cent in 2024/25 to 35 per cent this year.
The most popular reason for wanting to volunteer was “I wanted to improve things/help people” and was selected by 51 per cent of those who had volunteered, a rise of 5 percentage points on the previous study.
The figures show the growth in volunteering levels is driven by the older age groups, which includes a 4 percentage point increase in the proportion of over-75s who took part in formal volunteering at least once a month over the past year to 24 per cent.
The figures rose by 1 percentage point among those aged 35 to 49, by 3 percentage points in the 50- to 64-year-old bracket and by 2 percentage points among those aged between 65 and 74.
But volunteering levels among those aged 16 to 24 and 25 to 34 were flat, the figures show.
The proportion of people who said they had given to a charity in the past month dropped by 1 percentage point over the course of the year to 66 per cent.