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2023-03-31-accounts

17[th] Rochdale 1[st] Wardle Scout Group Annual Report

2022/23

17[th] Rochdale 1[st] Wardle Scout Group Report

Summary of the Year 2022/23

There is no denying that I am immensely proud of what we have achieved in Wardle Scout Group. We raised £28,000 through fundraising and grants to send seven of our young people to the World Scout Jamboree and whilst it wasn’t quite what we thought it would be, they did indeed grow, have an experience of a lifetime and develop a significant resilience which served them well at the Jamboree and will do so well into their futures.

It is still brilliant belonging to Wardle Scout Group. Here are the highlights:

Little did we realise that there would be quite so much change in the leadership team and thank you to the leaders who have stepped up to fill the gaps. Several of the leaders who were assisting at Beavers are transitioning to Cubs so this does mean that we need more help with the two Beaver sections. If anyone knows of anyone who would consider being a volunteer with beavers, please email gsl@wardlescouts.org.uk

Sharing the Load

Executive committees are being replaced this year with Trustee Boards.

The Trustee Board members are the trustees of the Scout Group charity – this involves ensuring we have enough money and it is spent on the right things, running (and improving) our Grade II listed Scout building and administering the group. It is imperative that our Trustee Board supports scouting efficiently and effectively and is representative of the views of our scout council members (parents and young people).

We should have one member per section on the Trustee board, in addition to the section leader. Ideally this would be a parent who wishes to be part of the decision making in running the scout group. The Trustee Board meets three times a year and discuss how the Scout Group is doing, what needs to be done next and how we can maintain a quality scouting programme in the group.

Cathey Quinn has served as the Chair for 5 years so we are now looking for a new Chair. Please speak to Norma if you are interested in assisting in running the scout group.

Leaders & Helpers

The leaders dedicate a lot of care and attention to ensure a great and safe Scouting Programme in Wardle (not to mention the laughs we have on the way). I think that collectively we have spent around 4000 volunteer hours to give the young people of Wardle Scout Group such a great time!

We still have leaders working towards their Wood Badge which is the leader qualification accepted by the institute of leadership and management and is a great addition to any CV.

Thank you to Akela Malek who ran Wednesday cubs for five years. Clare’s work is taken up more of her time now she has her own business.

Thank you to Stuart our Scout leader who took time out for personal reasons but has decided that his work and personal commitments are too great to give the time needed to the Scout Troop.

And a great big thank you to Tic-Tac who has run Watergrove Beaver colony for over five year and spearheaded the fundraising for the Jamboree seven. Rachel has left for personal reasons.

For all three leaders, it’s a big loss to our scout group but your commitment to Scouting was very much appreciated and we wish you all the best for your futures.

Thank You

Thank you EVERY ONE who is involved in Wardle Scout Group. We are all volunteers that enjoy ourselves and that shows in how the young people enthuse about their Scouting.

Thank you to those who have helped raised funds this year – what a fantastic result you’ve achieved.

Thanks to the Trustee Board who support all we do and respond to my requests to make it easier for section leaders to run their sections – and still comply with Charity rules.

Finally, thank you parents for trusting us with your young people and supporting us to do these incredible things.

Looking Forwards – plans for next year

With the Jamboree out of the way, we are now focusing on our Scouting at Wardle Scout Group over the next 12 months. We will be talking to our young people about what they would like to do over the coming months.

Norma Brandon, Group Scout Leader

The Barn Lawflat Wardle Rochdale Lancs OL12 9LD 14[th] July 2023

17[th] Rochdale, 1[st] Wardle Scout Group and Wardle Explorer Unit year ending 31/3/2023

Dear Chairman,

I have prepared the accounts in accordance with the year end for the group. It’s great to see all the sections in the group return to pre-Covid numbers and activities – meaning more spent on activities.

It’s worth acknowledging the work put in by the Fund-raising sub-committee who over 18 months raised the money needed to send seven young people to the World Scout Jamboree. What an amazing achievement. The sub-committee secured grants and organised events supported by friends, family and the whole village.

Fixed costs on the building are rising but for the time being, we don’t see a need to increase the monthly subs. We do encourage all parents and carers to ensure they have signed the Gift Aid declaration on Online Scout Manager so that the group can claim the maximum amount of Gift Aid back from HMRC.

I would once again like to thanks Clare Smith Accountancy for looking over the figures free of charge.

Kindest regards

Ian Tait

Accounts on behalf of the Treasurer

Payments

Payments
Fundraising costs, grants and donations paid
Fundraising costs
Other grants and donations paid (Jamboree in 2022 - 2023)
Sub total
Camps, activities and general expenses
Group camps and additional activities expenses
Other activities costs
Sub total
Capital items
Camp equipment
Uniform
Scout hut equipment
Other capital equipment
Sub total
Premises costs
Building improvements
Venue Maintenance (Inc Cleaning)
Insurance
Membership Costs (OSM Charges)
Rent
Repairs and renewals
Caretaker and cleaning
Community charge
Dual Fuel Utility costs (Gas and Electricity)
Audit Fees
Water and sewerage
Other premises costs
Sub total
Training, administration costs and other expenses
Training
Jamboree costs
Repayment of Africa Grant
Refund of personal Africa monies paid
Postage
Other sundry costs
Sub total
Total payments
Net of receipts / (payments) for year
Fund balances brought forward 1 April
Fund balances carried forward 31 March		 -
15,880.40
15,880.40
2,914.92
2,914.92
110.00
-
-
-
110.00
-
3,064.00
345.62
376.70
428.00
-
-
35.20
3,781.93
-
176.77
-
8,208.22
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
27,113.54
1,497.15
56,881.62
£ 58,378.77		 -
-
-
12,004.82
12,004.82
3,127.73
-
-
-
3,127.73
4,425.00
312.17
572.50
-
1,053.00
-
2,051.44
-
424.32
-
8,838.43
-
-
-
-
-
91.67
91.67
24,062.65
9,677.24
-
£ 9,677.24
Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the year
Cash funds
Barclays Bank 70924385
IAS - 83418979		 Year End 31/03/2023
£
882.24
48,748.53		 Year End 31/03/2022
£
8,183.54
41,646.61
IAS - Building Fund 23688178
IAS - Jamboree fund 73132374
IAS - 10784931
Cash Box - Beavers
Cash Box - Cubs
Cash Box Maintenance
Cash Box Scouts
Petty Cash
Total current assets
Current liabilities
Accounts payable
Other current liabilities
Total current liabilities
Net assets		 18.98
8,516.82
1.35
-
-
-
-
210.85
58,378.77
-
-
-
£ 58,378.77		 18.94
6,877.40
1.35
-
-
-
-
153.78
56,881.62
-
-
-
£ 58,378.77 £ 56,881.62

The above receipts and payments account and statement of assets and liabilities were approved by the Trustees on and signed on their behalf by:

Watergrove and Brown Wardle Colony Report

Summary of the Year

We continue to have 2 Beaver colonies on Monday and Tuesday evening. It has been wonderful to see the children grow and develop skills despite the ongoing difficulties children have had to face post-pandemic.

There have been some changes in leadership that has impacted on us all and is a loss to both the leaders and for the young people. Tic-Tac has retired her scouting cap but Yeti has done an amazing job of picking up the baton and keeping things running.

Currently the groups have 27 Beavers over 2 colonies. Watergrove (Tuesday) Beavers have 9 boys and 3 Girls in our Colony which are split into 4 Lodges: Stingray, Cobra, Chameleon and Hedgehog.

Brown Wardle (Monday) Beavers have 11 Boys and 2 Girls and are split into 3 Lodges: Rhino, Cheetah and Jaguar.

Special Activities that were fun

Every week at Beavers is fun but we have had some special events and activities that stand out as super fun!!!!!

Annual Boat Race

The boat race was brilliant and special thanks to the super doper prepared Hathi Jr. who turned up to support both groups in his wet suit!!! All children made amazing boats so individual and creative. Chatter won the parents/leaders race and Fraggle was not too happy. Not sure what happened with Watergrove but I’m sure it was equally as competitive.

Remembrance Parade

The beavers took part in the November Remembrance Parade. For some this was the first time they had done this and they all did the scout group proud.

St George’s Day Parade

For the first time since Covid the St George’s Day Parade was held for all scout groups across the district at Rochdale Football Club. The beavers really enjoyed seeing other beavers from different groups and it was a great day.

It’s important for us to encourage the Beavers to take part in these national events as it helps them to understand their heritage and give thanks to those who have defended our values.

Pirate Camp July 2023

Fraggle and Yeti led a very successful Pirate Themed Camp at the Scout Hut at the beginning of July and the beavers had a fantastic time. The beavers slept in tents in the scout hut and for many this was the first time they had stayed away from home so it was a brilliant achievement for all of them. The leaders and parent helpers put a great deal of effort into making the camp a huge success.

Badges Achieved

164 badges from both Colonies have been gained since the last AGM with lots more to come following camp!

Chief Scout Bronze Award

This is the highest award that can be achieved in Beavers. 7 Beavers have earned this award since July 2022, a big Well Done to Jude Molloy, Sam Taylor, Adam Hallaoui, Joseph Tarpey, Alexander Hill, Ted Farnell and Dexter Drury.

The Adam McCormick Trophy (awarded for achieving EVERY SINGLE BEAVER BADGE remains in the care of Emily Smith as one of only 2 Beavers to ever achieve all Beaver badges - Who is going to win the trophy next?

Leaders and Thank You

Leader’s awards

Huge thank you to Dave (aka Bacon), Stacey (Rainbow), Sarah and Ann (Keoo)for helping out at Tuesday Beavers. Monday Beavers thanks to Gill (Chatter), Cathy (Titch) and the parents who have been occasional helpers – we really couldn’t do it all without our parent helpers who go on to be leaders – so THANK YOU!!!!

Thank You

Thanks to the families and friends of the beaver leaders who support them to support us. Thanks to Tygga for her support with the pirate camp and keeping things in order in the scout hut.

Thank you also to all the parents for their encouragement and feedback about how our activities help to develop their beavers and those that have volunteered their time to support us with badge work and our sleepovers.

Looking Forwards – plans for next year

Yeti and Fraggle

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Beaver Scout Leaders
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Friday Night and Wednesday Night Cub Packs

Summary of the Year

It was really sad to lose Akela Malek and Rama from Wednesday night cubs. The cubs said a huge thank you to them as they held their last meeting on their postChristmas Bounce at Flip-Out. Thank you to Herman and Hathi for stepping up to share their time between Wednesday and Friday Packs and to the parents who have supported us on a rota system.

Special Activities that were fun

Let’s remind ourselves of the fun things we’ve done on top of our weekly meetings:

What a year!

Badges – what badges have been achieved

Cubs’ badges are a challenge for our young people to achieve and have many aspects to the badge that need significant effort by the cubs. Between the two packs, the cubs have achieved nearly 200 badges this year. A huge well done, especially to those who have earned their Chief Scouts’ Silver Awards before heading off to Scouts.

Ideally some of the cub activity badges should be done at home with the help from parents or carers. To aid you telling us about them, we are also going to start using a feature in OSM called Badges at Home. This means that you can do badge

requirements at home and tell the leaders about them by completing the details in the parent portal.

Leaders and Thank You

Thank you to all of our leaders who have kept things going, especially as I have spent a significant amount of time with the Jamboree Unit on the run up to attending the World Scout Jamboree with seven of Wardle Explorer Unit.

Bagheera, Chil, help on Friday nights with Herman and Hathi who also assist me on Wednesday evenings too. Tigi is at university but sometimes comes to give us a hand on Wednesday evenings too. Thank you to Mang who has just joined Wednesday pack from Beavers, you are more than welcome back, Martin!

It has been hard going running three cub packs, Explorers and taking the 36 members of the Jamboree Unit on their Jamboree journey and sometimes corners have had to be cut. Help with the admin of running the pack would be more than appreciated.

Thank you for continuing to support the cub pack to make the best time for the young people

Looking Forwards – plans Winter and next year

We are going to be welcoming some new Beavers to build up our numbers. Some more camps and some days out.

Akela Norma Brandon

Scout Troop Annual Report (2023) Leaders

Sam, John, Paul, Rebecca

Summary of the Year

We welcomed Orla, Darcy, Lewis, Evie, Adam, Sam, Jas, Beau, Eli, Sienna and Jessica in the last 12 months, increasing our numbers by a considerable amount from last year. Welcome all of you. We’re looking forward to investing Jas, Beau, Eli, Sienna and Jessica soon. We’ve also said goodbye to Ellis, Oliver, Ben, Isabelle and George – who have all moved up to our Explorers section.

This past year, we’ve focussed mainly on our challenge awards: teamwork, team leading and Skills for Life. We have a great team of Leaders all with their own expertise meaning we can spend lots of time outdoors.

Our Harry Potter camp was a great way to welcome our new Scouts. We spent the weekend in Hogwarts Houses earning points through a bunch of different Harry Potter themed activities. The camp brought us all closer as a Troop and the Scouts worked great in their teams.

We have also done our fair share of fundraising events, with nearly all of the Scouts having been awarded the Fundraiser badge.

Special activities that were fun

In the last year, we’ve had a few activities that were especially fun.

Our first one was the Lytham St Annes camp. This was a special camp for the Scouts because Stu taught us how to safely set up and sleep in hammocks. We had a busy programme, but some of our most exciting activities include:

In October, some of our Scouts attended the 2022 Manchester Monopoly Run, a Scouts event that has you running around Manchester to gain points at different landmarks. We all did about 20,000 steps throughout the day with both of our teams placing within 2 points of each other.

In February, we went to the Pennine District activity day. Here, the Scouts were free to roam Ashworth Valley Scout Campsite and try out any of the activities there were to offer. The clear favourite was crate stacking.

Our July camp was at Bramhope, Leeds. It was jam-packed programme including some of the following:

We’ve also been to parades, activity evenings, fundraisers and expeditions this year!

Badges

At the start of the term, we asked the Scouts what badges they’d like to do the most. Apart from skydiving and caving (the Leaders are too scared to do these), we’ve completed a total of over 200 badges in the last 12 months. A lot of this was focused on teamwork activities, but others include

We are currently working towards completing some of our Challenge badges and, for some of our older Scouts, their Chief Scout’s Gold Award.

Leaders and thank yous

Having recently taken over as Section Leader, I’d like to firstly thank Stu for mentoring me every week and initially inviting me back to Scouts in 2021.

Over the last 12 months, we’ve gained a great team of Leaders. We have welcomed Paul and Rebecca, bringing us up to 4 Leaders in total. This is great for the Scouts as we can now split into much smaller groups for activities

Thank you to all the Leaders who come every week to provide young people with memories, Skills for Life and friendships. And also, to the parents who have offered their support whenever we were running low on numbers.

Looking forwards – plans for next year

We have lots of days out planned including the Manchester Monopoly Run, CS Gold Expedition, Activity Days, plus any District events.

One thing that the Scouts and Leaders would like to do is more weekend camping. So, we’ll aim to get some short camps planned where we can learn new survival skills, camping skills and nights away.

Sam Scout Leader

Explorer Annual Report 22/23

Summary of the Year

The highlight of the year has been sending our seven Explorers to the Jamboree. Much of the Explorer Unit activities have centred around that and I thank those young people who didn’t attend the Jamboree for their patience as the Jamboree took up a significant amount of my time too.

The Explorers managed a cycling expedition from Wardle Scout HQ to Bradley Wood Scout Campsite – over 50 miles in two days – an awesome achievement which completed the Chief Scout Gold Award for some and counted towards the Platinum Award for others.

Special Activities that were fun

Seven of our Explorers were lucky enough to be chosen to attend the World Scout Jamboree in South Korea. What an experience that was – a lot for the right reason but the evacuation from site early will certainly make it the most talked about of the Jamborees for some time.

The whole Jamboree journey took over 20 months of applying, selection, fundraising, training events and then the big trip.

I was fantastic to get most of the Wardle members of the Jamboree unit at the recent Mersey Moot too – the young people excelled themselves in organising their weekend to get the most out of it and doing the jobs that quite often are left unattended by young people. It was a pleasure to be with them here and on their Jamboree journey.

Hopefully a year of more normal scouting will see us ticking a few more weekend aways off together as an Explorer Unit.

Badges – what badges have been achieved

The seven Jamboree attendees have clocked up an amazing 37 nights away because of their Jamboree journey. That is bound to make a huge difference to their Scouting lives and we do hope they have experiences to remember.

Chief Scouts’ Platinum and Diamond Awards

Henry Leahy, Autumn Marland, Harvey Spiller and Josh Wellens have achieved their Chief Scout Platinum Award and Lauren Aldred has this last week achieved her Chief Scouts Diamond Award. Huge congratulations to all of you.

The Chief Scout Diamond Award and King’s Scout Award can be started in Explorers and completed anytime before the 25th birthday, provided people remain members in scouts. This is normally possible by taking on a leadership role after their 18th birthday.

Leaders and Thank Yous

Welcome to Lauren who is a member of Salford Scout Network, a Beaver leader at Syke and now an Assistant Explorer Leader with Wardle Explorers too!

Thank you to Harley too who has been assisting us for the last nearly two years since his 18[th] birthday. It’s great to have some young people balancing my experience!

Looking Forwards – plans for next year

Next summer we will be attending the Red Rose International Camp with the Explorers and the Scout Troop. This camp was part of the Jamboree training last year and remains their favourite training camp. The Explorers who went last year asked to go on it again as soon as the dates were released. It’s 3-10[th] August 2024. It’s where you cement the friendships you have made in Scouting. We’ll also fit in more camps and other activities – we’d like to do spreading our evening meetings between scouting skills, cooking challenges, community impact work and fun games evenings.

It is encouraged that the Explorer programme is set by the young people. To this end, we encourage the young people to contribute to the planning of their evenings and activities.

Norma, Lauren and Harley.