Voluntary Organisations and Community Groups

The voluntary and community sector is constantly changing and comprises an extremely broad and diverse range of groups and organisations, from national and international charities employing large numbers of staff to small neighbourhood based groups run entirely by volunteers. These groups relate to the public sector in very different ways. We aim to ensure that the Gloucestershire Compact and its Codes of Practice provide a flexible enough framework to accommodate this diversity.

The Gloucestershire Compact is an agreement between a range of local public sector agencies and the voluntary and community sector,
underpinned by Codes of Practice which are being developed to cover the following areas:

• Consultation and Policy Appraisal
• Funding & Finance
• Human Resources: Staff & Volunteers
• Black and Minority Ethnic Voluntary & Community Organisations
• Community Groups
• Multi-agency Partnerships

The ethos of the Compact is that by developing a better understanding of each other’s needs, both sectors can work together to find better ways of doing things in the future.