Refocusing our priorities

This is my first Annual Report as Chief Executive. It’s humbling, returning to Scouts after some time away, to be reminded of the incredible difference Scouts makes to young lives.

Young people need Scouts more than ever. With over 10 million children in the UK saying they’re unhappy with life, Scouts offers a sense of fun, friendship and possibility. As we heard at our national conference in January, what young people need most is ‘trusted adults and safe spaces’ – exactly what our volunteers offer across our 7,000 Groups.

In my first 100 days in the role, I had excellent conversations with volunteers from across the UK. I’ve heard how and where we can best use our time and resources, acknowledging we can’t do everything.

As a team of volunteers and staff, we must be practical and honest about the financial challenges we face. Returning to our pre-pandemic membership levels is still a work in progress, and costs are increasing. To make sure we’re sustainable for the future, I’m focused on refining our operating model so we can run a balanced budget and support the movement long term in creating the right conditions for growth. Thank you to all our people for their continuing support during this time of change.

Thank you as well to those supporting volunteers with our membership system. We’re all too aware of the challenges this is presenting, and we’re working hard to resolve these. We’re sorry for the extra work this has created locally. We know there are still outstanding delivery issues and we’ve prioritised these.

We continue to be grateful for the generous support of funders and partners to enable our ambitions for young people. This year has included the largest ever donation to Scouts, £3.5 million from Omaze, as well as continued investment from the Department for Culture Media and Sport’s Uniformed Youth Fund of £2.8 million to support Scouts and Explorers growth. This is making a vital difference, helping us create new places in new communities. Our Squirrels numbers are climbing, and continued growth of Explorers is an encouraging sign too.

As ever, recruiting and supporting adult volunteers remains critical to supporting young people. Our work developing and delivering improvement to our volunteer experience will help us achieve this –
creating the conditions to make it easier and more rewarding to volunteer.

Alongside this, we’ve worked hard this year to help everyone in our movement understand what they need to do to keep our young people, volunteers, and staff safe. We’re committed to a continuous journey of learning and improvement, and we’re grateful to the partners who’ve given critical scrutiny to help us progress.

Planning for the next strategy is well underway. Thank you to the tens of thousands of young people and volunteers who’ve contributed so far, including those who attended our national conference in Birmingham. The future belongs to our young people, so thank you for helping them.

Finally, let’s not forget the incredible impact we make – like supporting Cub, Luke, who has autism and Tourette’s syndrome. He gave a talk to his fellow Cubs to help them understand more and work towards the Disability Awareness Badge. This is just one story among thousands, showing how Scouts builds confidence, kindness and self-belief. It’s also an indicator of our commitment to inclusion. Scouts really is a place for all.

Your belief and dedication to Scouts remains undiminished, and together we’re changing lives for the better.

Aidan Jones, OBE
Chief Executive