Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he has taken to ensure that voluntary and community sector organisations have access to adequate resources to adapt to distanced delivery as a result of the covid-19 outbreak.

The £750 million package offered unprecedented support to allow charities and social enterprises to continue their vital work and adapt service delivery to support our national effort to fight coronavirus. This funding will continue to support this work over the winter.

We have recently published new guidance on GOV.UK for organisations and groups, to help them to understand how to involve volunteers safely and effectively in their work during the coronavirus pandemic. Under the current national restrictions in England, people can leave home to provide voluntary or charitable services, where they cannot do this from home. We regularly update our guidance on volunteering on GOV.UK.

Information on the wider measures the government has made available and details on how to access the support measures can be found on GOV.UK. The Charity Commission has also published guidance on GOV.UK, which sets out how charities can get support for their staff, advice on use of reserves, and other potential issues.

Furthermore, ensuring charities can safely begin fundraising activities will be a crucial part of the sector’s recovery. DCMS has worked closely with its sectors to publish guidance relating to COVID-19. This includes practical guidance and resources from the Fundraising Regulator and Chartered Institute of Fundraising supporting charities to safeguard the public, staff and volunteers as they plan to return to fundraising activities in a safe and responsible way. This is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/guidance-for-dcms-sectors-in-relation-to-coronavirus-covid-19. Over the coming months we will continue to work with the charity, voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors to assess emerging needs and how we can best support them during the COVID-19 pandemic and through recovery.