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- 1 On the question of how to define ‘wellbeing’ and its multi-faceted nature see Rachel Dodge, Annette (...)
- 2 While the longevity of parishes is undisputed, and their existence has been dated as far back as th (...)
- 3 Town and parish councils (otherwise styled as neighbourhood/city/village councils) are statutory bo (...)
- 4 In this article, town councils and parish councils will collectively be referred to as ‘town counci (...)
1The definition of wellbeing has broadened beyond objective measures of health and wellness. Research on the emotional, cultural, occupational and social aspects of wellbeing has shown it to be multi-dimensional. These aspects have in turn been explored by means of a broadening range of constitutive elements, including play, creative expression, fulfillment, etc.1 Because many of these factors are intrinsically linked to human engagement, ‘community’ has come to be regarded not only as a normative value but as an important means by which individuals can maintain and enhance their overall wellbeing. The organization of communities through forms of local governance has a long history in Britain, with the ‘parish’ being perhaps the most ancient unit of local government in England and Wales.2 Today in England there are over 10,000 towns and villages with a parish or town council. They cover about 40% of the population, and are mainly located in rural areas. These councils are comprised of elected representatives (approximately 100,000), who volunteer their services to assist in the running of their communities.3, 4
- 5 In the British context ‘local authorities’ or ‘principal authorities’ refers to unitary authorities (...)
2Long-term underfunding, combined with rising demand aggravated by austerity, the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, have left many local authorities facing significant deficits in their budgets for services.5 For well over a decade, needs have been passed down to the lowest level of local government, where town councils across different parts of England find themselves at the frontline of the overlapping environmental, healthcare and poverty crises. The councillors on these councils volunteer their time and skills in order to perform a variety of services for the citizens they represent. This article explores the volunteering of a small group of longer-term councillors (ten years or more) in terms of how they ongoingly reflect on and make choices about how, or whether, to engage in different aspects of local council work. Councillors’ reasons for volunteering are influenced by the social context and the act of volunteering itself. Volunteering is therefore addressed as a process involving diverse activities by which councillors learn about different aspects of their own wellbeing.
3The article starts by means of sketching a brief history of austerity politics in the UK. This shows how long-serving councillors have become one of the primary points for the provision of welfare services, including food banks, warm hubs, youth schemes and social isolation outreach. The article goes on to show how a general lack of public awareness of the role of town councils, coupled with campaigns encouraging people from diverse backgrounds to become new volunteers, have drawn the public’s attention away from the work long-term volunteers are undertaking in filling the gaps in welfare provision. In turning to address the wellbeing of town councillors who have volunteered for ten years or more within this context, the results of semi-structured interviews with a small sample of councillors are presented. The results point to how processes of volunteering make salient to volunteers a broad range of wellbeing factors which they weigh against the risks of burnout posed by the social context. The final section deals with the link between wellbeing benefits and the resilience of longer-term volunteers. Given the current tendency for volunteering to decline in the UK, the role of this link in retaining volunteers would be a useful subject for future research.
- 6 David Cameron, “Building the Big Society”, Speech given by David Cameron in the Cabinet Room, 18 Ma (...)
- 7 An audit of the Big Society project was published by the think tank Civil Exchange (Civil Exchange, (...)
4In May 2010 the Cameron–Clegg, Conservative-Liberal Democrat government introduced ‘Big Society’ as the catch phrase for a package of policies which would ‘give citizens, communities and local government the power and information they need to come together, solve the problems they face and build the Britain they want.’6 Central to this was the idea that citizens would become volunteers. However, by 2013 Cameron and civil servants had stopped using the phrase ‘big society’, and within a further two years the operations of expensive new initiatives that would identify the citizen volunteers had been wound up.7 If the initiatives responsible for identifying volunteers had collapsed, the need for volunteers in the provision of welfare services had not.
- 8 Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013); Kev (...)
- 9 House of Commons Library, “Local Government Finance Settlement 2024/25”, 5 February 2024, https://c (...)
- 10 Institute for Government quoted in Michael Goodier, Garcia Carmen Aguilar & Richard Partington “How (...)
- 11 Jamie Peck, “Austerity Urbanism”, City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 1 (...)
5The need for volunteers in Britain has risen since 2010, when the 2008 financial crisis was deployed to legitimize deep social spending cuts through the imposition of a programme of austerity.8 With a short break during the COVID-19 pandemic (2019-21), successive UK governments have reduced support to local authorities through sustained reductions in public spending. At the local level, cuts in government grants to local authorities have meant that spending power across all councils will have fallen by 11% between 2010/11 and 2024/25,9 while some councils having had their core budgets reduced by half between 2010 and 2023/24).10 This has meant that many local authorities have had to prioritise statutory funding on providing vital services such as social care for children and adults, and drastically reduce or cut services they are not legally obliged to supply. Services from which local authorities have withdrawn funding include libraries, youth centres and the upkeep of playgrounds. When these are no longer provided by upper tiers of local government, the communities they serve turn to town councils and charities to fill the gap in service provision. Due to the redistributive role of local government functions, cuts in funding most adversely affect those groups in society which are already facing marginality and economic disadvantage, in what has been referred to as ‘austerity urbanism’.11 Uneven cuts to welfare have found expression in a growing range of needs at the local level. These go beyond needs due to the closure of libraries and the maintenance of playgrounds, to include more basic needs for food, clothing and heating. When these are no longer guaranteed by the state, acts of volunteering become an essential means by which these demands are addressed in the community.
- 12 Carl Baker and Mark Sandford, Unitary authorities: the role of parish and town councils (2020), htt (...)
- 13 The NCVO defines volunteering as: ‘any activity that involves spending time, unpaid, doing somethin (...)
- 14 National Council for Voluntary Organisations, Time Well Spent: A National Survey on the Volunteer E (...)
- 15 Volunteering is monitored by the government as part of the Citizenship Survey for 2001 to 2011 (Dep (...)
6In England there are approximately 100,000 town councillors,12 who are both elected representatives and volunteers. They are unpaid and the only respect in which they differ from volunteers defined using the National Council for Voluntary Organisation’s (NCVO) definition of volunteering, is that councillors have a duty to represent the residents of a community.13 In 2019 the National Council for Voluntary Organisation’s reported that two in five adults – almost 20 million people – had taken part in volunteering in the past year, with 81% having volunteered in and for their local communities.14 Longer-term trends in volunteering in England, however, point to levels recorded in 2019/20 (during the COVID-19 pandemic) as being a temporary departure from an overall downward trend since 2013/14.15 Town councils trying to fill vacancies in council seats have also been affected by these decreases in volunteering.
- 16 National Association of Local Councils, Local Council Elections 2022 (London, NALC, 2022), p.22.
- 17 Ibid., p.9.
- 18 Poole and Keith-Lucas note how ‘initial enthusiasms had died away’ soon after the first elections f (...)
- 19 Patrick Diamond, “Towards a More Viable Localism”, The MJ, 26 January 2022, https://www.themj.co.uk (...)
- 20 Alistair Jones, The Resurgence of Parish Council Powers in England (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 202 (...)
7Local councils suffer from what is termed a ‘democratic deficit’.16 In the May 2022 local elections, 20% of seats were left vacant after the election (and would be filled by co-option); and of those that were filled, the vast majority of candidates won in an uncontested election.17 This democratic deficit has characterized town councils for a long time,18 including the past few decades even as successive governments in the UK have sought to decentralize power from Westminster to the regions by means of ‘localism’. Localism is generally agreed to be an unclear political concept, that has been used in reference to the expectation by central government that communities would take over the provision of services from the state.19 When applied as part of the Big Society and austerity agenda there was little or no expectation of town councils becoming more active. The increased prominence of town councils in the delivery of services has rather been one of the ‘spillovers from the localism agenda’.20
8By means of considering public awareness of town councils, the next section considers another aspect of the context in which town councillors have volunteered over the last decade and a half. An approach to volunteering as a contextualised social process is then outlined.
- 21 YouGov, ‘Confidence in Local Councils’, 2024 https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/instituti (...)
- 22 All of the councillors I interviewed stated that most of the residents they represented had little (...)
- 23 Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement, The Ties that Bind: Citizenship and Civic Eng (...)
- 24 These ‘ancient parishes’ refer to the parishes before the split between ecclesiastical (church) and (...)
- 25 Key stage three (ages 11-14) of the national curriculum for the teaching of history in schools in E (...)
- 26 Examples of popular, long-running series in the UK featuring parish councils are the television com (...)
- 27 In terms of the average age of town councillors there is evidence to support these imaginative impr (...)
9Two-thirds of the public has low or no confidence in town councils;21 a finding which has to be tempered by councillors’ perception that the public has a poor understanding of the responsibilities of different levels of local government.22 The image the public has of parishes and their councils is in part influenced by their formal education and the media. As citizenship education is largely neglected in schools in England,23 most people only learn about parishes in history lessons on the ‘ancient parishes’.24 A topic of these lessons will often be the scandal centered on the administration of the Elizabethan Poor Law by a number of select vestries comprised of corrupt local dignitaries in the late seventeenth century.25 This image can be further (mis)informed by media representations of fictional parish council meetings. To be found in popular television and radio series, these meetings are most often set in communities living at a slower pace of life in the English countryside.26 In these two sets of representations, parish vestry meetings or parish councils are imaginatively viewed as being composed of predominantly elderly members, who administer their budgets with varying degrees of commitment and aptitude, and with often questionable motives. Views of town councillors as remnants of seventeenth-century vestry meetings of squires and parsons, or as retirees from gainful employment whose utility is falling into decay along with their age, are part of the context in which councillors have volunteered and undertaken a widening range of tasks throughout austerity, the pandemic and (most recently) the cost-of-living crisis.27
- 28 Charles Kenyon, “Charles Kenyon’s Country Diary: Pale, Male and Proud of Our Voluntary Work”, Third (...)
- 29 Susan Ball, “The new normal or more of the same? Everyday sexism and the response of traditional me (...)
10Bearing in mind that levels of volunteering are on a downward trend, there has been a backlash to the portrayal of those who continue to volunteer on local councils and form partnerships with local charities addressing essential needs.28 As increased demand for services to address basic needs becomes more apparent in their communities, town councillors are asking why more people do not volunteer rather than spend their time making jibes at those who do. However, as the viral spread online of a disorderly town council meeting held during Covid-19 suggests, the backlash will have to contend with the public’s continued interest in town councils as a form of light entertainment.29
- 30 National Association of Local Councils, Local Council Elections 2022,(London, NALC, 2022).
- 31 Victoria Bradford and Jessica Smith, “The Role for Well-being in Creating the Big Society”, Local W (...)
- 32 Thomes Janoski, March Musick and John Wilson, “Being Volunteered? The Impact of Social Participatio (...)
- 33 Ibid., p.516.
- 34 M. Kyle Matsuba, Daniel Hart & Robert Atkins, “Psychological and Social-Structural Influences on Co (...)
- 35 Richard M. Ryan and Edward I. Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hed (...)
- 36 Carol D. Ryff, “Know Thyself and Become What You Are: A Eudaimonic Approach to sychological Well-be (...)
11The research that found low participation in standing for election on local councils also found that of those who were elected, 46 % had served for five years or more, and 24 % had served for ten years or more.30 The positive impact of volunteering on individuals’ wellbeing had been the subject of research well before it received attention in connection with the ‘Big Society’ project in 2010.31 Research that specifically addresses long-term volunteering indicates a link between the relative stability of volunteering across the life course and the influence of the act of volunteering itself. According to Janoski et al., the learning effects of volunteering become a ‘habit’: ‘people acquire the “habit” of volunteering because they are routinely placed in social situations and social relationships where the social skills and dispositions requisite for volunteer work are developed’.32 The benefits of volunteering, such as its learning effects and its gratifying nature, when experienced through the practice of volunteering may help to explain why people become ‘attached’ to volunteering.33 Other benefits of the social practice of volunteering could include the knowledge to be gained by relatively privileged volunteers on the evolution of needs in society; and the lasting psychological effect whereby volunteers self-identify as ‘helpers’.34 To find out what exactly explains continuity in volunteering further research is needed on its benefits. This is directing attention towards eudaimonic wellbeing35 and its long-term emphasis on personal growth, value-led living and social contributions.36
- 37 Corey L.M. Keyes, “Social Well-being”, Social Psychology Quarterly, (June 1998), pp.121-140; Corey (...)
- 38 Martin E.P. Seligman, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being (New York (...)
- 39 Carol D. Ryff, “Eudaimonic Well-being: Highlights from 25 years of Inquiry” in Kazuo Shigemasu, Son (...)
12Nowadays, wellbeing is conceptualized as a multidimensional phenomenon that includes both hedonic wellbeing and eudaimonic wellbeing (Ryan and Deci, 2001; Joshanloo and Weijers, 2019). While these two groups of wellbeing are distinct from each other, they are also related by means of their influencing the development of each other (Frederickson, 2004). Hedonic wellbeing concerns maximizing pleasure and happiness and avoiding pain. It includes life satisfaction, and is operationalised through affective (emotional) experiences which can be positive (e.g. cheerful, satisfied) or negative (e.g. nervous, worthless) (Diener, Lucas & Oishi, 2018). Eudaimonic wellbeing is defined in terms of the development of valuable individual potentials and value-led living. It is often measured with Ryff’s scale of psychological wellbeing (Ryff, 1989), which has six dimensions, each of which is described in terms of the attributes of high scorers. Personal growth constitutes feelings of continued personal development, openness to new ideas and experiences, and the realization of one’s full potential over time. Purpose of life links to the presence of goals and direction in life, and feelings of meaningfulness. Autonomy comprises self-determination, independence and the sense of being able to self-evaluate on the basis of personal standards. Self-acceptance refers to having positive attitudes towards one’s good and bad qualities, and positive feelings about the past. Environmental mastery describes a sense of competence in managing the context in which one lives, including the ability to create and choose contexts in line with needs and values, bring forward opportunities, and manage complex arrangements. Positive relations with others relates to having warm and trusting social relationships, including the capacity of strong empathy, concern for the welfare of others and an appreciation of reciprocity. These six dimensions of Ryff’s scale make clear that eudaimonic wellbeing is not merely based on feeling happy or positive emotions (hedonic wellbeing). Eudaimonic wellbeing engages different aspects of a life rich in meaning and purpose, and continued development. Keyes emphasized that eudaimonic wellbeing is not just about personal growth but also includes an altruistic dimension comprising social aspects of relationships and community contributions.37, 38In eudaimonic wellbeing both personal skills and attributes, and quality ties to other people contribute to ‘optimal psychosocial functioning’.39
13A focus on eudaimonic wellbeing coupled with continuity in volunteering directs attention to the contextualized social processes of which ongoing volunteering is a part. Volunteering is not an abstract activity but a series of contextually situated practices in which volunteers are ongoingly reflecting on and making choices about participating. Having outlined the wider context for these situated practices; in the following section, the wellbeing effects of town councillors’ engaging in these practices of volunteering will be analysed, using the results of interviews with a small sample of long-term town councillors. The interviews focused on the councillors’ experiences of and opinions on being a councillor during a period marked by a series of overlapping crises. Based on the assumption that over a decade of cuts to local government services will have placed long-standing volunteers in the frontline in providing services, the aim of the interviews was to examine the impact this has had on some of the less tangible benefits of wellbeing. These were examined by means of posing broad questions addressing: the ways in which volunteering contributes to individual wellbeing; the aspects of volunteering that are appreciated and continue to be developed by interviewees in their volunteering activities; and the perceived downsides of volunteering and how they impact on volunteers’ wellbeing.
- 40 A survey of councillors conducted by National Association of Local Councils over six months in 2017 (...)
- 41 During the course of one interview, it became clear that the interviewee had only recently become a (...)
14The interviewees were drawn from the members of three town councils. In April 2022 letters and emails were sent to the 70 councillors on these councils asking for their participation in a questionnaire survey to be followed by in-person or online interviews. The response rate was 13%, with two later withdrawals. Given the low rates of response received in other surveys of councillors in England, the rate of response was typical.40 The research was undertaken in July 2022, and employed qualitative one-to-one interviews with eight councillors, each having 10 or more years volunteering experience on one of three town councils.41 The interviews were semi-structured, using narrative inquiry in recognition that people make sense of their lives through stories and in order to provide insights into the councillors’ subjective experiences of volunteering. The rationale of the research was shared with participants, and the questions were framed in terms of inviting participants to give their own opinions and experiences of being a councillor, their roles and their activities from their perspective. The quotations illustrating central issues are used with the permission of the interviewees, all of whom have been given pseudonyms. The results should not be generalized to other councils or councillors. They are instead intended to provide insights into individuals’ subjective understanding of their work as councillors, different aspects of which other councillors may or may not recognise.
15The wellbeing effects of long-term volunteering found in earlier research were confirmed, with interviewees mentioning both hedonic and eudaimonic effects.
It (voluntary work) is very, very important to me. To help other people is something I’ve always liked doing and it gives me quite a buzz to do so. And probably the biggest buzz is when I help with the Santa Claus. (James)
You’re not doing these things (volunteering) because you are a councillor, you are doing it because you are one of them, you just happen to be their representative. And to be a representative, it’s not rocket science, you have a responsibility to represent a range of views…. I was a do’er, I get things done. The then mayor said ‘You are dynamite’. I saw I could change things (in the town council), let’s do things differently. Twenty years later I’ve concluded you can’t do that, it’s not worth the stress…. COVID didn’t force me to think differently, but it might of sort of got me off the merry-go-round (Steve).
16Hedonic effects were the subject of the early part of the interviews. Positive hedonic effects of membership (pleasure from representing the community) and the act of volunteering (happiness – or the ‘buzz’ for James – gained from the act of helping others) were mentioned, as were negative hedonic effects. Many of the negative effects could be attributed to frustrations arising from structural factors as opposed to increased pressures due to austerity, COVID or the cost-of-living crisis. Both James and Steve stood down from their town councils in 2022, citing council working practices as an obstacle to getting anything done and a source of unnecessary stress. After not seeking re-election, they continued to be active volunteers in their communities.
17Although volunteering for the town council was a means by which interviewees socialized and shared their skills and knowledge for the benefit of the local community, the town council was only one of the local voluntary organisations with which interviewees were involved. Current and former councillors revealed a pragmatic attitude about the extent to which a town council could benefit councillors’ wellbeing:
I like making change, I like improving, and when I got to the council there were a lot of things that I felt could be done better…So many ideas were pooh-poohed in the meeting by the old guard… So it was frustration, you just couldn’t get anything done….Two days after the first lockdown was announced , myself and two other councillors set up a community shop in a community centre…. It had nothing to do with the council, it’s just we knew each other and we wanted to do something for the town….In effect, it was good for the three of us because it gave us something else to do. (James)
You can come in with something (an idea) but you cannot develop it [through the town council]. […]. Fix My Street could be do with anything, graffiti, you know anything […]. You can get down to a really, really detailed level […]. Fix My Street is useable and I’m sure it will be used, it could be better used by local councils. (Bruce)
18These extracts illustrate how volunteering contributes to eudaimonic wellbeing through aiding both personal growth and environmental mastery. The interviewees show how their being open to new ideas and experiences can help them to realize their potential. They also demonstrate how the eudaimonic benefit of environmental mastery finds expression in volunteers managing the context and making effective use of surrounding opportunities. Bruce gives the example of an online resource Fix My Street, which he proposed to the town council.42 Although the idea was not taken up by the council, the website can still be used by residents in order to report local environmental problems. These problems will then be passed on by Fix My Street to the responsible council in which the problem occurs, thereby exerting external pressure on the council and its officers to act.
19There is no clear pathway to enhanced wellbeing through volunteering on a town council. However, it was evident that the benefits were distributed among different aspects of both hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. When it came to references to eudaimonic benefits, these were often mentioned in association with each other:
I lead our climate action group. I’ve had the reigns pulled in on me because it was a working group but it has now been upgraded to a council sub-committee, which means that I don’t get to choose what we do, there are ways round it. I have produced a climate action plan for (the town council), and it was adopted by Council …. One of those aspects in that plan is about youth and I want to be able to work with climate action groups within the town to go out to schools…One of the things I do want is a youth council and that will be one of the things I want to achieve before my current term ends. (Alice)
20In this extract, Alice describes her voluntary work as it relates to a range of (overlapping) eudaimonic benefits: new ideas, goals, personal standards, managing the context, self-acceptance and relations.
21Over the course of each interview (average length 1 hour 20 minutes), the narrative quality of responses became evident in more developed answers. One interviewee (David) suggested that he continued to volunteer because he had experienced mental health issues related to having lost his business and become homeless. For this reason, volunteering was a conduit through which people could mitigate against social isolation and loss of status. According to this interviewee, volunteering helped with his own wellbeing by means of it having brought to light feelings of empathy. The interviewee’s personal experience was something he drew on — and took pride in — when helping others:
I have over the years come in [to town] to sit down with someone [homeless] […] and then you sit and talk, get their trust and talk about the issues. Ex-army people – Afghanistan, Iraq – they’ve gone, but we had a lot at one point, and generally I’d take them down to the train station […] because in [the county town] we have […] a homeless centre […] I was at a time homeless […] but then I was unexpectedly rescued by people I didn’t know […].Then I decided I’ve got to do something useful, so meeting a lady called Y, who’s one of my best friends now…we both ran for [unitary authority] elections, we both lost, but I got the bug….I stood again and I won.
[…]. I’m not sure I’m glad of all the experience I’ve had; homeless though means that I have a completely different perspective ‘cause I know how terrifying it can be, the sense of fear and the sense of not knowing, and then how difficult, dealing with officialdom…it’s difficult dealing with officialdom when you are just lying on a bench. (David)
22Other interviewees used the volunteering experience to come into contact with people unlike themselves and from whom they could learn. Interviewees described how volunteering had opened ways to see more deeply into their own lives and the lives of others:
It’s important that you learn to chat to people, because there isn’t any doubt you learn a lot from people. Many a time I’ve gone to a council meeting having read my papers and having thought “Well, it’s obvious the way that will go, and I know who is going to be saying that about that” [...] And then somebody says something and you think “Goodness, I never thought of it that way”. And I think that’s one of the things, when I have said anything to people about becoming a councillor I’ve always said “Don’t think it’s a weakness to admit you’ve changed your mind, it’s actually a strength”, or to say “I’m sorry, I got that wrong.’” You know, we’ve all had different experiences in life, haven’t we. (Julia)
- 43 Town councils are almost equally divided between those in which councillors represent the whole of (...)
My dad was a journalist, so we were basically middle class. I’d always been well paid and things like that. And it’s not until I represented [name of] Ward,43 which is mostly social housing, that I realized there are people here who literally can’t take their purse out and spare a couple of quid because they don’t have that much money…. The actual empathy comes from being close to people who are actually poor, and seeing how they are struggling… I go along [to the community lunch] occasionally mainly to talk to people to see how they’re getting on. […]. When we did the surveys about what people wanted in [the ward], they want a McDonald’s […], somewhere where their kids can go sit in the evenings and get cheap food, it’s not the food so much. And they want bingo nights, but they don’t seem to understand that the council does not provide this. (Robert)
23The end of this quote makes clear that residents in Robert’s ward have a poor understanding of the extent of the responsibilities of town councils. Robert appreciates that although councillors have limited powers with which to manage the context in which they work, they may benefit from a sense of autonomy derived from being able to evaluate their personal standards through voluntary work. Later in the interview Robert made clear his appreciation that while he cannot control other people, he can control his actions in pursuit of upholding his standards (in this case, making the playground safe for children):
I talked to the kids in the shelter [on the playground]. I told them that it’s not the drugs and the alcohol that’s the issue, it’s the needles and the broken glass from the bottles. There are bins only ten yards away…. I’m happy to support a shelter and youth fun days. But I’m not happy to support broken glass and discarded needles (Robert).
24When Covid-19 restrictions resulted in the closure of local government offices, interviewees stepped up and supported communities in new ways. Local groups of volunteers unrelated to the town councils – in which most interviewees were active - quickly helped to establish information services as well as operating delivery services and food banks, and supporting their most vulnerable residents. As communities struggled in the face of an unprecedented health crisis, voluntary organisations demonstrated their value both for the wellbeing of their communities and the wellbeing of volunteers:
(When Covid lockdowns started) I actually volunteered and became secretary of [a new local initiative] and we had a gradual handover to [an existing charity] and they are going very, very strong at the moment with the food bank. Yesterday there was a horrendous need for food and I got a call to see if I could help out. I’ve recently been welcoming Ukrainians with some of the same people, we’re sort of looking out for each other as well.
Alice: I was very fortunate that I got involved in (a befriending initiative) very quickly….and very quickly became the helpline co-ordinator, which was a fantastic thing to be able to do. (Bruce)
When it was the lockdown, we - me and the mayor at the time - pestered all the local supermarkets to give us a load of Easter eggs and chocolate… and we had 700 Easter eggs and just knocked on people’s doors and said “Have you got kids? How many? There’s an Easter egg.” And we contacted the union [Unison] and they gave us a big donation…..
My daughter sometimes says “Why do you do so much voluntary work?” She can’t see why I do it. She doesn’t do any. I can’t get her to understand the buzz it gives me helping other people. [Daughter is 29] …People need to know how they can make a difference. (Graham)
25The findings from the interviews support the link between eudaimonic wellbeing and long-term volunteering found in earlier research. What these narrative accounts also make clear is how volunteering in action is linked to practices of taking people seriously, responding to them respectfully while volunteers maintain their own commitments, learning and genuinely considering possible change in their own views, and knowing their limits:
I’m OK about balancing my time (between council and other community work)…. I’m very lucky about knowing when to say “enough”…. I’m quite resilient, although I’m lucky. There are some councillors who have had to [pay attention to self-care during the pandemic] but then a lot of us have rallied round the councillors who we could see were wobbly. The strong of us have done that. So we’ve kind of worked, again a very small team…there are three or four of us who do work very closely in a really good team.
Julia: You can be an expert on what you know well, but what you know well is very limited. There are different levels, not levels, different categories of expertise….It’s about experience of life. You never stop learning. (Alice)
26While interviewees were open to learning from new experiences, they also appreciated the importance of knowing their own limits:
Youth is not my speciality at all. Someone said at the local youth centre “David arrived and after two hours he almost looked comfortable”. I’m not a natural youth worker, it’s simply not me. It’s about language, it’s the way you approach them and everything else, and it’s not my forte. (David)
27In this quote we can see that David appreciates his own limits, saying that working with young people is not his ‘forte’. In the interview, David also made clear that when volunteering he had worked with specialist youth workers, which may mean that he has underplayed his own aptitude for working with young people. It was David who was mainly responsible for organising the painting of a mural in the town by young people, who included a playful image of David in the mural. David clearly took pride in this whole experience when talking about it in the interview.
28Interviewees’ narrative accounts show how they are constantly working on their eudaimonic wellbeing, and that while volunteering is both demanding and time-consuming, volunteers do learn from their participatory practices. Voluntary work involves the ability to reflect, communicate, empathise and work well with people. It involves dialogue and considered judgement. Through acts involving cooperation, symbiosis, altruism and bargaining, these town councillors contributed to their eudemonic wellbeing.
29On the other hand, the councillors had to deal with the uncertainties, contingencies and unanticipated consequences of volunteering in a context of compounding crises. While burnout was not explicitly mentioned by any of the interviewees, the social context was causing some interviewees to rethink the form of their participation:
I probably won’t – more than likely – won’t stand again because that will have been… 16-17 years and that’s long enough….. We need new blood, and to be honest with all the new issues that keep arising, I think I need a bit of a break, a chance to recharge a bit. I’m still doing things with the community centre, and help with the foodbank is needed more now than during the pandemic. I’ll always be involved with something because that’s what I do. (Alice)
Covid has made me think about some of the unnecessary stress of council work. There’s a constant stream of issues requiring attention, but that’s not really it. It’s how it’s managed […]. For that to change, central government is going to have to reform the sector, structurally I mean. I can make more of a contribution, and get more of thank you for it, volunteering for [a local charity] than for the council. (James)
30Interviewees do not intend to give up volunteering rather they plan on changing where they volunteer depending on where they view help to be most needed. Frustration with the structural arrangements of town councils and the perceived unlikelihood of central government making any changes, play into interviewees’ concerns that they are not being able to develop some of the more intangible benefits of volunteering.
31This article has set out an approach to volunteering as a contextualized social process. While small in scope, the case study of long-term town councillors adds to understanding about the practices of volunteering and associated wellbeing benefits in the aftermath of the financial crisis and under pressures of a pandemic and cost of living crisis. Interviews with long-term volunteers have highlighted their resilience, performing their tasks within a context characterized by poor public understanding of the role of town councils, and structures which may limit the benefits to be derived from volunteering or lead to stress. The observations of a small group of town councillors contribute to ongoing research on eudaimonic wellbeing. They provide further empirical evidence of the intangible benefits of volunteering for individual, as well as wider community, wellbeing.
32The indirect consequences of over a decade of austerity and the longer-term story of rising poverty have meant that people are volunteering not just to enrich communities by making sure that the mundane tasks of town councils are performed, they are far too often providing essential services to the most vulnerable when the state has failed them. The pastiche images of councillors as ‘pale, male and stale’ have a residual currency, as media comments and campaigns to encourage more ‘diverse’ candidates to stand for election often reveal. Each of the interviewees could be characterised as ‘stale’ and ‘pale’, and three-quarters were also ‘male’. The narrative quality of the interviews, however, pointed to a variety of experiences this seemingly homogeneous group brought to and developed through voluntary work. This needs to be taken into account when trying to recruit new volunteers, by making campaigns sensitive to the variety of skills volunteers come with and may develop, and the possible eudaimonic benefits of volunteering. If the talent of long-term volunteers is not nurtured, then local communities (and the wellbeing of volunteers) will be made all the poorer and volunteering may well continue on its trajectory of decline.
Susan Ball is senior lecturer in contemporary British culture and society, and member of the research group TransCrit at the University Paris 8. She has published in international journals on migration and divided societies, visual sources, land use planning and governance. Her ongoing research addresses space and social relations as material components of, and in representations of, localities.
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Notes
On the question of how to define ‘wellbeing’ and its multi-faceted nature see Rachel Dodge, Annette Daly, Jan Huyton and Lalage Sanders, “The Challenge of Defining Wellbeing”, International Journal of Wellbeing 2 (3) (2012), pp.222-235.
While the longevity of parishes is undisputed, and their existence has been dated as far back as the 15th century (Alistair Jones, The Resurgence of Parish Council Powers in England (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), pp.3-4), their history remains unclear. In their extensive work on English local government, Webb and Webb noted that ‘There exists no trustworthy and satisfactory book on the parish as a unit of administration’ (Sidney Webb & Beatrice Webb, English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act: The Parish and the County reprint 1922, London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1906, p.6). Almost half a century later, P.D. Thomson remarked that the history of parishes ‘is still waiting for a historian’ (P.D. Thomson, Parish and Parish Church: Their Place and Influence in History (London, Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd., 1948), p. viii. To the present author’s knowledge, the subject is still awaiting a historian.
Town and parish councils (otherwise styled as neighbourhood/city/village councils) are statutory bodies comprising the first tier of government and primary access point of democracy, i.e. the most local level of government in England (and Wales, where they are known as community councils). Carl Baker and Mark Sandford Unitary authorities: the role of parish and town councils, 2020, <https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/unitary-authorities-the-role-of-parish-and-town-councils/> [3 June 2024].
In this article, town councils and parish councils will collectively be referred to as ‘town councils’ to reflect the change in name adopted by an increasing number of councils (particularly in more urban areas) permitted by the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007.
In the British context ‘local authorities’ or ‘principal authorities’ refers to unitary authorities, county councils, district councils, boroughs and city councils. Town and parish councils are ‘councils’ and part of local government but they are not local/principal authorities.
David Cameron, “Building the Big Society”, Speech given by David Cameron in the Cabinet Room, 18 May 2010. <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/78979/building-big-society_0.pdf> [3 June 2024] p.1.
An audit of the Big Society project was published by the think tank Civil Exchange (Civil Exchange, Whose Society? The Final Big Society Audit) (London, Civil Exchange, 2015). This audit includes the winding up of the Network, Programme and Service responsible for identifying citizen volunteers.
Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013); Kevin Farnsworth and Zoë Irving, “Austerity: Neoliberal Dreams Come True?”, Critical Social Policy 38(3) (2018), pp. 461-481.
House of Commons Library, “Local Government Finance Settlement 2024/25”, 5 February 2024, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9956/
Institute for Government quoted in Michael Goodier, Garcia Carmen Aguilar & Richard Partington “How a Decade of Austerity has Squeezed Council Budgets in England”, The Guardian, 29 January 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/29/how-a-decade-of-austerity-has-squeezed-council-budgets-in-england
Jamie Peck, “Austerity Urbanism”, City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 16(6) (2012), pp. 626-655; Annette Hastings, Nick Bailey, Glen Bramley & Maria Gannon, “Austerity Urbanism in England: The ‘Regressive Distribution’ of Local Government Services and the Impact on the Poor and Marginalized”, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 49(9) (2017), pp.2007-2024.
Carl Baker and Mark Sandford, Unitary authorities: the role of parish and town councils (2020), https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/unitary-authorities-the-role-of-parish-and-town-councils/ [3 June 2024].
The NCVO defines volunteering as: ‘any activity that involves spending time, unpaid, doing something that aims to benefit the environment or someone (individuals or groups) other than, or in addition to, close relatives. Central to this definition is that fact that volunteering must be a choice freely made by each individual. This can include formal activity undertaken through public, private and voluntary organisations as well as informal community participation and social action. Everyone has the right to volunteer and volunteering can have significant benefits for individuals.’ National Council for Voluntary Organisations “What is Volunteering?” n.d. https://www.ncvo.org.uk/help-and-guidance/involving-volunteers/understanding-volunteering/what-is-volunteering/ [3 June 2024].
National Council for Voluntary Organisations, Time Well Spent: A National Survey on the Volunteer Experience (London, NVCO, 2019).
Volunteering is monitored by the government as part of the Citizenship Survey for 2001 to 2011 (Department for Communities and Local Government, Citizenship Survey. 2nd Release SN: 200007, (London, UK Data Service, 2019) and currently as part of the Community Life Survey (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Community Life Survey 2021/22: Volunteering and Charitable Giving, 2023, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/community-life-survey-202122/community-life-survey-202122-volunteering-and-charitable-giving#fn:1 [3 June 2024]). For technical reasons it was recommended not to include a question on the topic of volunteering (time spent and frequency) in the Census 2021 (Office for National Statistics ‘Volunteering topic research for Census 2021’ <https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/planningforcensus2021/questiondevelopment/volunteeringtopicresearchforcensus2021#recommendation-not-to-include-a-question-on-the-topic-of-volunteering-in-census-2021> [5 May 2024]).
National Association of Local Councils, Local Council Elections 2022 (London, NALC, 2022), p.22.
Ibid., p.9.
Poole and Keith-Lucas note how ‘initial enthusiasms had died away’ soon after the first elections for parish councils were held in 1894 (K.P. Poole & Bryan Keith-Lucas, Parish Government 1894-1994 (London, NALC, 1994), p.66.
Patrick Diamond, “Towards a More Viable Localism”, The MJ, 26 January 2022, https://www.themj.co.uk/Towards-a-more-viable-localism/222417 [3 June 2024]; Mark Evans, David Marsh and Gerry Stoker, “Understanding Localism”, Policy Studies 34(4),(2013), pp.401-407.
Alistair Jones, The Resurgence of Parish Council Powers in England (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), p.23.
YouGov, ‘Confidence in Local Councils’, 2024 https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/institution/National_Association_of_Local_Councils [5 June 2024].
All of the councillors I interviewed stated that most of the residents they represented had little understanding of the division of responsibilities between different levels of local government.
Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement, The Ties that Bind: Citizenship and Civic Engagement in the 21st Century HL Paper 118 London, House of Lords, 2018, p.4.
These ‘ancient parishes’ refer to the parishes before the split between ecclesiastical (church) and civil parishes in 1866.
Key stage three (ages 11-14) of the national curriculum for the teaching of history in schools in England includes ‘the development of Church, state and society 1509-1745’ as one of its topics (Department of Education, History Programmes of Study: Key Stage 3. National Curriculum of England, 2013 <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c66d740f0b626628abcdd/SECONDARY_national_curriculum_-_History.pdf> [3 June 2024]). This will often include teaching of the Elizabethan Poor Law (the Old Poor Laws 1598 and 1601, amended by subsequent legislation), which was the basis of poor relief in Britain between 1601 and 1834.
Examples of popular, long-running series in the UK featuring parish councils are the television comedy The Vicar of Dibley (Richard Curtis, Peter Bennett-Jones & Ben Caudell, Executive Producers 1994-2020, The Vicar of Dibley [TV series], Tiger Aspect Productions, BBC 1), set in the fictional rural parish of the same name, and The Archers (Julie Beckett, Executive Producer 2017 to present, The Archers [Radio series] BBC Radio 4), the longest running radio drama series in the UK (1951- to present), set in the fictional rural parish of Ambridge. Jones summarises the ‘Dibleyesque’ view of councillors as predominantly elderly men who ‘are either self-serving, self-centred, or idiots’ (Jones, Alistair, The Resurgence of Parish Council Powers in England (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, P2). Following his own experience of serving on a town council in the late 1990s, the editor of The Archers made an unfavourable comparison between his village and the imaginary village of Ambridge (K.P. Poole & Bryan Keith-Lucas Parish Government 1894-1994 London, NALC, 1994, p.260).
In terms of the average age of town councillors there is evidence to support these imaginative impressions. The average age of councillors at all levels of local government in England is 60, a figure that has remained reasonably constant since records began in 2006 (Local Government Association, National Census of Local Authority Councillors 2022, 2022, https://www.local.gov.uk/publications/national-census-local-authority-councillors-2022 [4 June 2024] p.14). 42 % of all councillors are aged 65 or over, compared to 17 % of the population (Ibid., p.14). While the proportion of councillors describing themselves as male has fallen from just under 70 % in 2006, the majority (57 %) were male in 2022 (Ibid., p13).
Charles Kenyon, “Charles Kenyon’s Country Diary: Pale, Male and Proud of Our Voluntary Work”, ThirdSector, 27 September 2018, https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/charles-kenyons-country-diary-pale-male-proud-voluntary-work/governance/article/1494261 [4 June 2024]; Peter Foster & Sebastien Payne ‘The Potential of Parochial Politics’, Financial Times (2022) 14 March, p.17.
Susan Ball, “The new normal or more of the same? Everyday sexism and the response of traditional media to an internet sensation during lockdown”, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique 28, (2023) https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/10873?lang=fr [3 June 2024].
National Association of Local Councils, Local Council Elections 2022,(London, NALC, 2022).
Victoria Bradford and Jessica Smith, “The Role for Well-being in Creating the Big Society”, Local Work 105 (2011), https://cles.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/LW-105-Well-Being-and-Big-Society1.pdf [3 June 2024].
Thomes Janoski, March Musick and John Wilson, “Being Volunteered? The Impact of Social Participation and Pro-Social Attitudes on Volunteering”, Sociological Forum 13(3) (1998), p.498.
Ibid., p.516.
M. Kyle Matsuba, Daniel Hart & Robert Atkins, “Psychological and Social-Structural Influences on Commitment to Volunteering”, Journal of Research in Personality” 41(4) (2007), pp.889-907.
Richard M. Ryan and Edward I. Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-being”, Annual Review of Psychology 52, (2001), pp.141-166.
Carol D. Ryff, “Know Thyself and Become What You Are: A Eudaimonic Approach to sychological Well-being”, Journal of Happiness Studies 9(1), (2008), pp.13-39; Mohsen Joshanloo, Veljko Jovanović and Joonha Park, “Differential Relationships of Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-being with Self-Control and Long-Term Orientation”, Japanese Psychological Research 63(1)(2020), pp.47-57.
Corey L.M. Keyes, “Social Well-being”, Social Psychology Quarterly, (June 1998), pp.121-140; Corey L.M. Keyes, “The Mental Health Continuum: from Languishing to Flourishing in Life”, Journal of Health and Social Behaviour 43 (2002), pp.207-222.
Martin E.P. Seligman, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being (New York, Free Press, 2011) and Christopher Peterson, Nansook Park and Martin E.P. Seligman, “Orientations to Happiness and Life Satisfaction: The Full Life Versus the Empty Life”, Journal of Happiness Studies 6 (2005), pp.25-41), similarly to Keyes (1998 & 2002 Ibid.), argue that eudemonic wellbeing should not just entail identifying individuals’ unique virtues and their development. Crucially, these strengths should be put to work for the greater good and the welfare of humanity at large.
Carol D. Ryff, “Eudaimonic Well-being: Highlights from 25 years of Inquiry” in Kazuo Shigemasu, Sonoko Kuwano, Takao Sato & Tetsuro Matsuzawa (eds.), Diversity in Harmony - Insights from Psychology: Proceedings of the 31st International Congress of Psychology (New Jersey, John Wiley & Sons, 2018), pp.375-395; Mohsen Joshanloo, Veljko Jovanović and Joonha Park, “Differential Relationships of Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-being with Self-Control and Long-Term Orientation”, Japanese Psychological Research 63(1) (2020), p.47.
A survey of councillors conducted by National Association of Local Councils over six months in 2017-18 received a 2.1% response rate (NALC, Diversity in Local Councils in 2018 (London, NALC, 2018), p.4). Weinberg also received low rates of response in his survey of county councillors (James Weinberg, Who Enters Politics and Why? Basic Human Values in the UK Parliament (Bristol, Bristol University Press, 2020)).
During the course of one interview, it became clear that the interviewee had only recently become a town councillor (2020). He did, however, have extensive experience of volunteering in his community, which included taking a leading role in town twinning with a town in France.
Fix My Street https://www.fixmystreet.com/ [5 June 2024].
Town councils are almost equally divided between those in which councillors represent the whole of the town and those in which councillors are elected to individual wards in the town (Arianna Giovanni et al., A Survey of Parish, Town and Community Councils in England and Wales, Somerset, Society of Local Council Clerks, 2023, p8). Wards may have more one or more town councillors.
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