Active Communities
Active Communities: Headline Findings from the 2003 Home Office Citizenship Survey
This Home Office report uses findings from the 2003 Home Office Citizenship Survey to look at how patterns of active community participation in England have changed since 2001, the date of the last survey.
Title: Active Communities: Headline Findings from the 2003 Home Office Citizenship Survey
Author: Research Development and Statistics Directorate
Series:
Number of pages: 14
Date published: July 2004
2003 Citizenship Survey Key findings
The proportion of the population in England aged 16 and over, engaged in active community participation at least once a month in the 12 months prior to interview has risen significantly, from 48% in 2001 to 51% in 2003.
Extrapolating from survey percentages to the population of England as a whole, suggests that around 18.8 million people were engaged in active community participation in 2001, compared to 20.3 million people in 2003, a rise of more than one and a half million.
The proportion of people engaged in civic participation and formal volunteering has not changed significantly, but the proportion engaged in informal volunteering rose significantly from 34% in 2001 (or around 13.5 million people), to 37% in 2003 (14.9 million people).
Achieving the Public Service Agreement (PSA) target of an increase of 5% requires an additional 932,000 people to be involved in community participation over the period 2001 to 2006.
Home Office Citizenship Survey
The Home Office has commissioned 2 Citizenship Surveys to date, in 2001 and 2003, and plans to conduct a 3rd in 2005.
The 2003 Citizenship Survey involved interviews with a nationally representative sample of 9,486 people in England and Wales, and an additional sample of 4,571 people from minority ethnic groups.
This representative sample can then be used to monitor progress against a key Home Office PSA 8:
'To increase voluntary and community sector activity, including increasing community participation,
by 5% by 2006'.
The Citizenship Survey asked respondents about 3 specific types of active community participation:
Civic participation - activities that include signing a petition, contacting a local councillor or public official working for a local council, attending a public meeting or rally, or contacting an MP.
Informal volunteering - giving unpaid help to an individual or others who are not members of the family
Formal volunteering - giving unpaid help through groups, clubs or organisations to benefit other people or the environment (e.g. the protection of wildlife or improvement of public open spaces).
This report examines early progress towards fulfilling the civil renewal agenda, by focusing on how patterns of active participation in communities have changed between 2001 and 2003. It examines 4 key questions:
How many people participate in civic affairs and what do they do?
How many people are involved in informal volunteering and what do they do?
How many people volunteer formally and what do they do?
Does active participation vary according to the relative deprivation of areas in which people live?
Civil renewal
Civil renewal is about engaging local people and groups actively in the decisions that affect them. The pamphlet ‘Active Citizens, Strong Communities: Progressing Civil Renewal’ (
PDF 143kb) reiterates the vital importance of civil renewal, and sets out ideas about how it can work in practice, identifying 3 elements necessary for communities to bring about change:
Active citizenship: people given more opportunities and support to become actively involved in defining and tackling the problems of their communities, and improving their quality of life.
Strengthened communities: communities helped to develop their capacity to form and sustain their own organisations, bringing people together to deal with their common concerns.
Partnership in meeting public needs: public bodies involving citizens and communities more effectively in improving the planning and delivery of public services.
Download: Active Communities: Headline Findings from the 2003 Home Office Citizenship Survey PDF 95kb
Last update: Wednesday, July 23, 2008