Unnecessary child protection checks and other bureaucratic barriers are wasting the potential of volunteers in public services, Gordon Brown’s volunteering tsar, Lady Neuberger, will say today.

The Liberal Democrat peer, brought in by the prime minister when he took office to be the government’s volunteering champion, will urge hospitals and other providers to break down their resistance to using volunteers.

In the first of a series of reports, on health and social care services, Neuberger says that too often organisations are demanding Criminal Records Bureau checks on all potential helpers.

“This is clearly unnecessary. Checks should only be undertaken where a volunteer might spend time alone with young people or vulnerable adults. Managers need to show some common sense and stop, for example, requiring CRB checks for people working on hospital radio stations,” the report says.

“Insurance and other legal considerations do seem to have created a level of risk-aversion throughout all management levels in health and social care services.”

Neuberger, a health spokeswoman in the Lords, was one of two senior Lib Dem peers brought in as so-called goats (as in Government of All the Talents) by Brown, along with Lord Lester, the lawyer who advises on constitutional reform.

A Charity that helps people with learning difficulties is having to cut some of its services because of a lack of funds.