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"Unshackling Good Neighbours"

17 May 2011

The Cabinet Office's Red Tape Task Force, led by Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, has spent nine months examining the rules and regulations which put people off giving their time and money to good causes. The team set about answering three questions: what stops people giving their time, what stops people giving money, and what stops charities and voluntary groups and social enterprises growing?

Its report, Unshackling Good Neighbours, makes six key recommendations to the Government to help reduce bureaucracy and red tape:

► Reform the law to clarify the extent of charity trustees' and volunteer liability to encourage more involvement and participation by individuals
► Eliminate regulatory duplication and repeated requests for the same information in slightly different formats, for example by Companies House, the Charity Commission and commissioners
► Establish a Working Party to include representatives of the insurance industry and civil society organisations to address the insurance needs of the sectors
► Encourage investment in Civil Society Organisations by creating a new category of 'social investor‛ and clarify the position of trust law with regard to charities
► Simplify the licensing of fund-raising events and provide clear standard guidance across the sector
► Encourage the out-of-work to get involved in greater volunteering and ensure they and Job Centre staff understand that it does not automatically affect their benefits and welfare payments.

The Office for Civil Society will now consider the recommendations in full.

A key finding is to seek to develop a ‘reasonableness’ test to protect volunteers from consequences of well-intentioned voluntary acts, for example if an elderly person slips on a pathway which a charity volunteer has cleared of snow. In another tangible result, the Association of British Insurers has signalled it will revise its definition of non-business ‘social driving’, which currently puts people off using their cars for volunteering because they have to pay higher insurance premiums.