Coronation’s Big Help Out volunteering project at risk of lack of participants

Shanelle Webb runs Soul Shack, which needs more drivers for food bank deliveries in Lambeth, south London. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer

An event at the heart of the king’s coronation festivities is at risk of being a “damp squib” because of a volunteering crisis across Britain, the government has been warned.

The Big Help Out is inviting people across the country to mark the occasion by signing up to volunteer in their communities on the one-off bank holiday Monday on 8 May in the hope of inspiring more people to start volunteering amid record shortages.