I am going to attempt to reply to the topic of the current state of folk music in the UK but firstly I would like to give a rough introduction before modulating, as it were...
    Checking the Leicestershire Folk Diary, I can see several clubs that are longstanding, prominently feature 'traditional' music, some weekly, some monthly, with booked artists backed by locals. A plethora of singarounds which have seemingly open policies (a couple which I know personally do not have any problems fitting in traditional styles alongside a wide range of interlocking genres), plus various one-off gigs and, under the radar, house concerts, one of which I was invited to a couple of weeks back.
    When I first encountered folk music in my teens, it seemed to fit alongside my interest in jazz and to a lesser extent rock. Gateways: an Alex Campbell early record/Dylan/live exposure to the McPeake family in the club just founded locally, circa 1962-3, plus Anne Briggs who mightily impressed me (in Nottingham and later in London). Interest in folk music also made me rethink my somewhat dismissive attitude to country blues compared to the jazz of the time I was listening to.
    I've just checked an old copy of Singabout, dated 1987 which was a local zine focused on the area, edited by the late Roy Harris. A cursory count of clubs moves it upwards from those early 60's venues and I would guess that the apparent contraction that many allude to follows although this doesn't quite fit the narrative of a scene in the 80's killed off by - choose your poison. But I would accept there was a drop in the number of clubs over the years. Given the expanded variety of outlets for all musics of whatever genre in the twenty first century, cheap technology and the ease of producing recordings for cd/download etc, I would argue that these factors balance to a certain extent those contractions. Guesswork, of course, but my impression. Fwiw.
    For creative musicians, labels tend to be unhelpful and often ignored. They were back in the old days, certainly. I know, I was around, from the provinces to London round 1965 and onwards. Similarly, young musicians today have no problem ranging across artificial boundaries and alongside of their contemporary creativity I've noticed a growing interest in older artists like Shirley Collins, whose 'traditional' credentials would, I assume, be unchallenged except by the more rigid retro-ideologues. A big feature in The Wire magazine and a long and favourable review of her last album provides some evidence of this. This publication, which started in the 1982 to focus on experimental jazz and evolved to cover a much wider range of challenging musics provides an interesting example of how music, art and artists evolve. It has also covered and reviewed many folk artists. If people want to see a 'tradition' frozen into said retro-ideologues' purist abstractions, which, in my experience, musicians don't waste their energy on debating, good luck to them. Similarly, if people want to embrace the generosity of spirit that my early folk heroes such as Alex Campbell, Anne Briggs, Shirley Collins exemplified and which I witness in the musics of today, they may, perhaps see that the old songs can still have meaning and audience. The 'tradition' survived the retro-ideologues, after all. So perhaps the scene - or scenes - might be in ruder health than narrow partisan interests continually and repetitively state. Imo. Fewer folk clubs? Who cares?There was one in my home town in 1963. There are still local venues where you can find traditional song as stated above.
    Overall, I see two main differences over the years are the older age demographic and the different platforms now available to musicians beyond the 'folk club' and these can well contain enough spaces for traditions to be explored in a variety of ways. Creative musicians will continue to do so, I suspect.