Communities sign up to scheme to share time and skills

Cabinet Member for Children and Families’ Wellbeing Clare Curran

Scores of neighbours across Surrey are signing up to share their time and expertise in a new community drive launched by the county council.

Since plans for the scheme, which involves members offering their skills and getting help with tasks they struggle with, were launched communities have worked with the council to form groups in Farnham, Guildford, Godalming, Spelthorne, Surrey Heath, Woking and East Surrey – covering Tandridge ad Reigate and Banstead.

So far more than 70 residents have joined up and that figure is set to be swelled as groups in Epsom and Ewell, Runnymede and Mole Valley launch before the end of the summer.
For more information about the initiative – known as timebanking – and how to get involved visit the county council’s website.

Clare Curran, the county council’s Cabinet Member for Children and Families’ Wellbeing, said: “Whether you’re a teenager who could help a pensioner get online or you’re retired and could spare some time to teach students to play an instrument, this is about communities pulling together.

“While the council’s finances are under severe and ever-growing strain from rising demand for services like adult social care, time banking is a way of helping each other out, in a way that we think a community should, by using the huge untapped resources that we all have to offer each other.”