Understanding Surrey’s Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Sector
Surrey has a vibrant and diverse voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector, spanning small volunteer-led groups, charities, social enterprises and larger organisations supporting communities across the county. But despite its importance, there has historically been no single, comprehensive picture of the sector: who makes it up, where organisations are located, what resources they have, and what pressures they face.
Bridges and Beacons: State of the Voluntary, Charity, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Sector is a part of CBE's portfolio of regional economic, devolution, and community-level localism work.
Professor Amelia Hadfield presenting CBE's findings at the 2025 Charity Mashup event in Woking. L-R: Prof Hadfield; Jason Gaskell, Chief Executive Surrey Community Action; Paul Latham Director of Communications and Policy, Charity Commission
Initial findings in September 2025
L-R: CBE's Megan Ward and Dr Vassilis Karokis-Mavrikos speaking with members of the public during the Charity Mashup event in Woking / September 2025
CBE Doctoral Fellow Margaryta Khvostova presenting findings at the final report dissemination in Woking / March 2026
From an idea to a county-wide picture
The project was developed by the Centre for Britain and Europe (CBE) at the University of Surrey, led by Professor Amelia Hadfield and Maya Chew, in collaboration with Surrey Community Action (SCA) and Jason Gaskell. The partnership brought together CBE's research and data expertise with SCA's deep knowledge of Surrey's voluntary and community organisations. Together, the Centre set out to build a more detailed picture of the sector using organisational, financial and geographical data, alongside the knowledge and experience of organisations working across Surrey. The project also onboarded specialists in data science, sociology, and policy, including Dr Vassilis Karokis-Mavrikos, Dr Nivedita Chatterjee, Doctoral Fellow Margaryta Khvostova, and researcher Megan Ward.
The CBE team brought together data from a range of sources, including Charity Commission records, and used data analysis and geographical mapping to explore the scale, distribution and characteristics of Surrey's VCSE sector. Rather than a simple data exercise. The project was designed to generate evidence useful to the people actually working in the sector.
Taking the findings to the sector
The CBE team completed its interim findings in 2025, providing an initial picture of the size, distribution and characteristics of Surrey's VCSE organisations. These findings were presented at Surrey Community Action's Charity Mashup event in Woking in September 2025, bringing the research directly into conversation with charity and community organisations across the county. The event provided an opportunity to test the emerging findings against the experience of people working on the ground: what did the data capture well, what was missing, and what did it tell us about the realities facing Surrey's VCSE sector? The feedback helped shape the next stage of the research.
Completing the picture
Following further analysis and engagement, the final report was completed in early 2026.
The findings were presented in March 2026 at Woking United Reformed Church, at an event attended by a wide range of charity and community organisations from across Surrey. The final findings were presented by Professor Amelia Hadfield, Dr Maya Chew and Megan Ward, providing an opportunity to bring the research back to the organisations and communities whose work sits at the heart of the project. The final report provides a county-wide evidence base for understanding Surrey's VCSE sector—including its scale, geographical distribution, organisational characteristics and the wider context in which organisations operate. More importantly, the project has created a foundation for ongoing conversations between the VCSE sector, researchers, funders and public-sector partners about how Surrey can better understand, support and work with its voluntary and community organisations.
A research partnership
For CBE, the project demonstrates what applied university research can look like when it is developed with the sector rather than simply about the sector. The collaboration with Surrey Community Action has allowed the research to combine rigorous data analysis with practical sector knowledge, while the engagement events have ensured that findings are shared, challenged and developed in conversation with the organisations they concern. The result is a shared evidence base that can support the sector's future work in Surrey.
Related sustainable development goals
