The Commercial and Voluntary Sectors

Abstract

The preceding chapters of this book have sought to map out the changing role of the state in leisure policy, and to identify both the trajectory of, and influences affecting, such change. However, the state’s response in policy terms does not take place in isolation from developments in the commercial and voluntary sectors. In the 1980s and 1990s, when attempts have been made to reduce and restructure state spending, the commercial and voluntary sectors have become more significant. Any explanation of the nature of leisure policy and the role of the state will be required to take account of the process of mutual adjustment between the leisure sectors. An analysis of leisure policy cannot be neatly encapsulated in a discussion of the state machinery. This chapter will therefore provide an account of the contemporary significance and historical development of the commercial and voluntary; sectors, as a precursor to the discussion in the final chapter of the state’s role in neo-Fordist or post-Fordist Britain in the 1990s.