The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations is the membership organisation for Scotland's charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises. Charity registered in Scotland SC003558. Registered office Mansfield Traquair Centre, 15 Mansfield Place, Edinburgh EH3 6BB.
Policy blog
Congratulations on your appointment as Deputy First Minister of Scotland. I very much look forward to working with you again in this new role. Read more
Last month First Minister Humza Yousaf joined colleagues across the voluntary sector at SCVO’s annual conference, The Gathering, where he shared that Fairer, multi-year funding for the sector was on the horizon. As part of the Scottish Budget process, he offered the voluntary... Read more
Last week the Living Wage Foundation announced the real Living Wage rate would increase by 10% to £12 an hour (£13.15 in London), as inflation and cost-of-living pressure continue to have the biggest impact on low paid workers. Scotland’s voluntary sector is a major employer... Read more
Back in 2015, SCVO and TFN surveyed around 1,000 sector workers about their experiences working in the voluntary sector. Eight years, four UK prime ministers, two referendums and a pandemic later, it was high time for a refresh. Last month GCVS and the Scottish Centre for... Read more
From the 1st of July 2023 all recipients of public sector grants will be required to pay at least the real Living Wage and provide effective workers’ voice as a minimum standard. These changes are part of the Scottish Government’s commitment to become a Fair Work Nation by 202... Read more
SCVO has written to Neil Gray MSPÂ on the recently released Fair Work First guidance. Dear Mr Gray I look forward to meeting with you on 10 May to discuss how we collectively ensure that the Scottish Government's approach to economic development recognises the value and potential... Read more
On 19 January 2023, SCVO wrote to Richard Lochhead MSP, Minister for Just Transition, Employment and Fair Work to outline the key challenges facing Scotland's voluntary sector in relation to Fair Work. Fair-Work-and-Grant-Funding-Mr-Lochhead-2023-01-19Download Read more
On Tuesday, the Employment and Fair Work Minister Richard Lochhead and Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity Minister Lorna Slater, announced that all organisations that receive grant funding from Scottish Government, enterprise agencies, and public bodies must pay the... Read more
Chief executive Anna Fowlie has now offered to meet with Mr Swinney as we continue to work closely with the Scottish Government as the #RunningCostsCrisis worsens. Read more
Scotland’s voluntary sector is a major employer, employing over 135,000 people, around 5% of Scotland’s workforce and a third more people than the 100,000 staff employed in Scotland’s digital and technology sector. This workforce makes a huge contribution to people and... Read more
SCVOBriefing_CostOfLivingDebate_22_10_26Download Read more
The Living Wage shouldn’t be an aspiration or a ceiling – it’s the bare minimum anyone should expect.  Read more
Summer 2022 has been like no other, dominated by excessive heat, drought, and what we have all learnt is the wrong type of rain. The political climate has fared little better, paralysed by a leadership contest while energy costs and inflation spiral. Despite the increasingly... Read more
Each year at the beginning of September, the Scottish Government delivers its Programme for Government, a set of actions that the government will take over the next year to progress its priorities. Specifically, the programme includes, legislation, spending, policy initiatives... Read more
The Fair Work Convention has recently published its ‘Fair Work Manifesto for Scotland’ urging all political parties as well as employers, unions, public agencies and civil society organisations to commit to delivering a Fair Work Nation by 2025. Scotland’s Fair Work Convention... Read more
Since the launch of the 2016 Fair Work Framework and the challenge set down by the Fair Work Convention for Scotland to be a world leading Fair Work nation by 2025, there has been much support, new government departments established, a Fair Work Implementation Plan and high level... Read more
The framing of a government budget is to identify the priorities and ensure funds reach where they're needed the most. That delicate process has become fraught with difficulty and trade-offs for local and devolved governments since the financial crash. Each autumn, our policy and... Read more
The release of the Paradise Papers during Living Wage week is something of a stark reminder of the inequality that still exists in the UK. While the wealthiest in society are able to stash money overseas, many are still fighting to receive a fair wage for a day’s work. Living... Read more
Happy #LivingWageWeek! This week sees the announcement of the updated real Living Wage, calculated according to the cost of living. The Living Wage increase will mean a payrise for hundreds of thousands of people. There are now 3,600 accredited Living Wage Employers that have... Read more
Recommendations fail to guarantee the human rights of the workforce in the UK The Taylor Report on the modern workforce was published earlier this week to mixed reviews. There was some criticism for a report that many feel is too cautious to enact real change for workers in... Read more
As we move from paper to action, practical projects like Community Jobs Scotland are key. Read more
Our out-dated, inflexible labour market is a key barrier to equality in employment Read more
Given the significant rise of working households experiencing poverty, the performance of the labour market can no longer be adequately represented merely by counting the number of people in work. Working with the UWS-Oxfam Partnership and Warwick Institute for Employment... Read more
Our sector has an ambitious vision for Scotland’s future. The question is how can we make our vision a reality? Read more