It is really wonderful how many people in our area are prepared to give so freely of their time in one form or another. The Conservatives want the voluntary sector to play a greater role in service delivery, whether that be assisting our older people, the more vulnerable people in our community, or with international aid.

The Conservatives appreciate the many benefits to society of a volunteering culture and we want to nurture this by rewarding and incentivising both volunteers and the charities to which they give their time:
 

• An end to the hi-jacking of lottery funds by ensuring that they are devoted entirely to voluntary and community organisations, with no diversion  to public sector projects
• Reducing the cost to charities of hiring staff and volunteers by reforming the Criminal Records Bureau to enable them to get new people on board more quickly.
• Reforming Gift Aid by reducing the amount of paperwork and bureaucracy associated with it
• Promote volunteering by practising what we preach and giving central government employees the entitlement to an annual volunteering leave
• Letting Charities Keep a Share of Savings when they deliver public services to promote greater efficiency and increase the amount of funding available. Currently, charities that deliver services on behalf of the government often cannot recover all their costs, let alone retain savings in the same way as the private sector
• Creating a one-stop portal for grants to enable smaller charities to win a fair share of government funding
• Radical action to tackle ‘charity deserts’ where there are acute shortages in the provision of services by the third sector, including the creation of Social Enterprise Zones, where tax and benefit rules will be relaxed
• Setting up a Social Investment Bank to leverage capital for the areas that need it most
• Creating a new Office of Civil Society to fight for the interests of the third sector in Whitehall and Westminster.

We have many amazing voluntary organisations in Warwick and Leamington and the Conservatives want to do everything we can to encourage their work. Our approach is not to change charities, but to change government, so that it gets out of their way and, instead of hindering them, helps them to achieve their objectives.