Local Numbers

A couple of weeks ago the Scout Association released the figures from this year’s census and the reported that the youth membership was up by 3.45% year on year. These figures are very promising and show the greatest year on year increase since 1972!

Then last week my County, Staffordshire, released its figures. Overall across the County the number of youth members are up by 1.8%. Not as good as nationally, but still an increase. My own District, Newcastle, shows an increase of 2.8%, which, again is below the national average, is still an increase. Other Districts show increases above and below the national figure, and, unfortunately, some decreases.

One interesting thing is that all of the Districts in the County (11 of them) show they have young people on waiting lists. In fact, when the census was taken in January, there were 362 young people waiting for places in Beavers, Cubs or Scouts across the County. And that’s kind of sad that there aren’t places available for them. Generally speaking, there are not enough adults in the various Groups to be able to accept these young people. This could be down to actual lack of adult help or just that the Group is ‘full’ and cannot physically accept any more kids.

Hopefully, Groups across the County will be able to recruit new adult members and ensure that these young people who want to join are able to do so without much delay!