Whether it’s at reception, on wards or in the discharge lounge, volunteers make vital contributions to NHS services. They support patients, especially those who might not have family or friends to help them, and can help to improve staff experience too. Yet until now, we’ve not had a clear picture of how many volunteers step forward week on week.

That has now changed as NHS England has published its first official dashboard highlighting the number of people volunteering in NHS trusts. Data collection, which was introduced in April 2024 for all NHS trusts, was 1 of the recommendations made by the NHS Volunteering Taskforce. The taskforce was brought together to consider how we can maximise the impact of volunteering across the NHS following the incredible public support shown during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result, we now know that a total of 71,828 people volunteered in NHS trusts in the last year, donating over 6.4 million hours of their time. This phenomenal contribution helps patients, supports NHS staff and is good for volunteers themselves too.

The data will help us to better understand the number of volunteers, the number of hours they contribute and how well they represent our communities. It can be broken down by NHS region, integrated care system and NHS trust so that organisations can compare and better understand their volunteers’ makeup and impact.

Volunteers are critical and the support they provide helps to improve patient experience and outcomes. Spending time with patients who need extra help to stay mobile whilst on wards, or sitting with patients at the end of life who have no family or friends to visit them is hugely valuable. Volunteers can also help the hospital journey go more smoothly by supporting frail patients in emergency care departments, helping patients get their medicines more quickly or accompanying patients home on discharge, to help settle them in and make sure they have food in the fridge.

Where volunteers are representative of our local populations, they can also support with community engagement, helping to tackle embedded health inequalities in some parts of our local areas.

Overall, the data shows that volunteer numbers across England demonstrate significant variation. While some trusts report hundreds of volunteers contributing thousands of hours, others have less developed opportunities, which suggests a need to improve volunteering. Nationally there has also been change with an increase in younger volunteers since the pandemic.

We’re calling on leaders of trusts and integrated care boards to look at their local data, make comparisons with comparable trusts and identify where volunteers could make a bigger impact to both patients and colleagues.

For more information on NHS volunteering please visit the NHS England website.

 Note

• Currently NHS England only collects data about volunteers in NHS trusts.
• From 2024 to 2025 the number of volunteers was the only mandatory item on the return. Trusts reached full compliance with all metrics by April 2025.
• More information about the data collection is available on the NHS England website.

Publication reference: BL00012