September 2021 Newsletter
5[th] Crawley Scout Group
Annual Report
Contents:
Group Updates -Chairman's Report -Group Overview
Chairman’s report, Michael Gauntlett
Welcome to 5th Crawley’s AGM and thank you for joining us.
Section Updates
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Beavers
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Cubs
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- Scouts
Group Contact: GSL Eddy Hills
First of all, I would like to thank all the Young people within our group for their resilience throughout this pandemic. Times have been difficult and many of our young members have continually stayed positive and enthusiastic about our programs and activities, turning up to outdoor sessions and contributing to online activities.
As always, my continual thanks goes out to all the section leaders and helpers for supporting the whole section throughout our journey into and now hopefully out of the pandemic. These volunteers have spent large amounts of time devising programs and writing risk assessments to ensure we can provide the best possible experiences and learning we can. Thank you all.
The executive committee has met continuously throughout the past 2 years and have ensured we run the group within all expectations. My special thanks has to go to Eddy Hills who has arranged many things that allows us to operate and has also arranged levels of funding through community grants.
We have exciting plans ahead, both for our infrastructure and for activities across all sections. Sections reports are included in this newsletter.
We would very much like to hear from any parents who feel they can make a small commitment to our Group by providing this. Any support - please let Eddy know if you think you can help. Thank you also to parent reps who have supported us this year - your input is very much appreciated.
Thank you
Michael Gauntlett, Chairman
Group Overview
Group Scout Leader- Eddy Hills
Fifteen months has passed since our last Annual Report and it's been an interesting journey for us and I hope that we are in a better place now, however we will continue to adapt going forward.
Its customary to describe the formation of the Group - there are two Beaver Colonies, two Cub Packs, split between Three Bridges and Maidenbower and a Scout Troop based the HQ in Gales Drive, Three Bridges. Each section is supported by their own team of volunteer leaders and helpers who run weekly activities. In 2021 we were asked to partner with Neil Armstrong Explorer Scout Unitwe look forward to developing this relationship. The Group is supported by a team of parents and leaders (Executive Committee) who support the running of the Group, ensuring this is done safely with the funds to do so within the frameworks of the Charities Commission and The Scout Association. The Scout Association has aligned our ways of working to match the national covid situation throughout. We have now resumed most activities taking appropriate safety measures.
Each section reports summarise what each has done so I will avoid repeating their content. The Group has enjoyed an eventful year and has shown growth, although when there were no face to face meetings it was difficult to recruit new youth and adult members and we recorded a small decline on our annual membership census in January. However our leaders used various recruitment methods to overcome this challenge. With Clive's skills we now have a website which is fit for purpose, please take a look. Many will recall that we lost Liz in March which has left a big void, Liz Oke supported Maidenbower since its inception. Members raised over £400 towards flowers, a tree and her parents' chosen charity Great Ormond Street where as a child Liz had been a patient.
The past year has been difficult for many Groups nationally and 5th Crawley leaders, supporters and helpers with constant hard work continued to deliver high quality Scouting throughout. The following words are from the citation that accompanied the award for their efforts, the Commissioners Commendation-
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� Collectively leaders and supporters across the Group kept scouts, cubs and beavers meeting throughout various phases of the pandemic. Every leaders' circumstances were different but they were willing to adapt, learn new skills and support each other often across different sections.
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In some cases this meant changing nights or running different age groups on additional nights, staying involved and leading meetings remotely even though they had moved to a new area of the country, stepping up to more responsibility.
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Being prepared to support face to face meeting even though they were at higher risk themselves. Considering new ways to give young people an enjoyable weekly experience in spite of the limitations.
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Being pro-active in planning to ensure that as near complete programmes were ran so that young people still gained experiences and achieved badges and awards throughout.
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Mentoring so that other leaders gained the knowledge and skills to be able to deliver quality on line experiences. Even though personal circumstances may have hindered some from their usual week to week involvement.
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Recognising the importance to look forward and stay in touch with the local community to recruit new young people to take part in current meetings or join in the near future.
As a consequence 5th Crawley has continued to flourish with their young members gaining awards and life skills. Many thanks to all leaders and supporters who played a role during the past year."
Many thanks to our Executive Committee under Michael's chairmanship for their support during the past 15 months. Finally Scouting doesn't happen without the support of our youth members and parents- you have been great, we appreciate your dedication and efforts. Thank you!
Section Updates
Maidenbower Beavers - Alan Mayes (Chill) ABSL
There are currently have 22 beavers who attend meetings regularly. During the various lockdowns our meetings were run on Zoom, which for the first part of the year which was a shared programme with
Three Bridges Beavers, Jane and Marie kindly running the sessions. We returned back to face to face from May onwards. We had 6 beavers move up to cubs and have more moving up between November and December. We also have 6 due to start shortly to replace them, we also have a healthy joining list who will be 6 in the coming year.
We have managed to run a varied programme which has included hikes , pioneering with marshmallows and spaghetti and the cyclist badge. We also held the beavers olympics! Most importantly we held camp fires at Stanford and Maidenbower Junior School with s’mores and toasted marshmallows. We had six beavers who were awarded their Chief Scouts Bronze award during lockdown and they were presented electronically with some internet magic from Eddy. We also invested some beavers online and others face to face when we held the activity day in June. We sadly lost our beaver leader Liz Oke earlier this year and she has been greatly missed by us all. We remembered Liz at our activity day in the summer which ended with Liz’s family being invited to plant a tree for her which was very well attended.
We have welcomed Rachel and Debbie who have joined us to support Alan in running Maidenbower Beavers. In addition we are also grateful to Helen, our Young Leaders and all mums and dads who have helped as part of our parent rota over the past year.
Three Bridges Beavers - Jane (Bubbles), Beaver Scout Leader
The last year in Scouting has presented us with many challenges when Covid 19 hit, and in Late March 2020, we had to close completely due to Lockdown. We then had to decide how best we could continue to deliver Scouting to the young people.
– After April Half Term we began Zoom meetings. This was tough at the beginning virtual meetings took some getting used to! The Beavers and their parents showed great resilience and persevered with online meetings. We managed to source fun and engaging guests to join us virtually through the 1st Virtual Scouts Facebook Group. These included a Drumming lesson using household items, a live talk about rats, rodents and reptiles and we were able to see them up close virtually. We had a virtual visit to the Army Museum and a gory talk from a Roman Soldier! One of our favourite sessions was with Megan and her two Guide dogs for our Disability Badge. What a truly inspirational lady!
We prepared and delivered activity packs to be completed in our sessions, which resulted in our Beavers achieving 310 badges collectively over the year! An amazing achievement, and just shows how well the Beavers adapted to online meetings. We have also presented 11 Chief Scout Bronze Awards. We have managed to maintain our numbers throughout the pandemic, which shows just how well we have all worked together to give the Beavers the best Scouting we could in such difficult circumstances. This would not have been possible without the help of the Parents joining every week and helping their children with the online activities - for that we are truly grateful.
Three Bridges and Maidenbower Cub Packs- Chris Harris ACSL /Alan Mayes (Chill) ABSL
Much of this last year has been conducted under lockdown and so we held
the majority of our Cub meetings online via Zoom. To reduce the load on our leaders, we continued to unite the Three Bridges and Maidenbower packs in the meetings, regularly seeing about 20 Cubs in each session (fairly evenly split between the packs). In May, we were able to fully resume face-toface meetings and these were run by Alan and John with help from Hayden and Ian. At this point we re-divided the packs and ran alternating programmes, where one group would meet online ( led by Chris and Jenny) while the other would be face-to-face and then vice versa the following week. This was quite successful and enabled us to maintain our level of activities and badge work despite the challenges.
In Three Bridges we have had 3 Cubs move up to Scouts and 4 Beavers move in to Cubs during the year - with more on their way. We have also managed to help number of Cubs get ever closer to their Silver Chief Scout's Silver Award - with congratulations to Kiran for completing before his move to Scouts! Presently there are 16 cubs meeting and we are expecting this to grow over the coming months. Thank you to Natasha who is shortly due to attend University, we hope you will visit us when you are back during the holidays.
Maidenbower cubs currently have 13 members, over this year 4 have moved to scouts and have earned their Chief Scouts Silver Award, we also have 6 due to move up shortly from beavers .
Sadly we unexpectedly lost one our leaders during the year and Liz's presence was certainly missed as we emerged from the lockdown cocoon. We were pleased to be able to welcome her family to join us as we planted some trees in her memory at Stanford during our Activity Weekend (or "Not-ACamp Camp"). There will always be a part of her with us now whenever we camp there.
There have been a wide range of activities this year, including a remotely-led Escape Room, remote sleepovers, clay modelling, microwave baking, making Chinese lanterns and dream catchers, quizzes, environmental awareness, fitness sessions and Cub Olympics, cycling and finally canoeing on Tilgate Lake. We also had a number of brilliant visitors including Lucas Jet's Circus and some disability awareness sessions where we learned about visual impairment and deafness (and how to sign to songs). As mentioned, we were really pleased to be able to hold an activity weekend at the end of May where the Cubs did everything but sleep overnight - putting up tents, cooking, pioneering, den building, fire lighting, campfire, making kites!
As a close to the term and the year Alan ran a camp for the Cubs at Stanford (this time with overnight stay!) with the assistance of Chris, John and Corey - and the chef skills of Helen and Naomi. Although it was really rather wet, we managed to complete a load of activities AND Alan successfully passed the requirements to achieve his Night's Away Permit! However, the camp ended on a slightly bittersweet note as Chris bid farewell to 5th Crawley as he moved on to Bromley District.
It has been a challenging year, but we look forward to moving on and up into the next year with your support as we discover more activities and new adventures!
Many thanks to Ian, Jenny, Victoria, John, Hayden and our Young Leaders, Natasha, Corey, Oscar.
An Update from the Scout Troop - Alex Donald ASL
Scout numbers have remained stable in the last 12 months thanks in part to a large number of members moving up from cubs. Many of whom were invested in the presence of the District Commissioner at the end of the term. We have a couple still to invest who could not make that evening. At present our numbers look to be around 20 scouts and we are regularly seeing 14-16 each Thursday evening.
This term has seen the return to regular in person scouting and the young people have readapted to the return to face to face really well, completing complex pioneering challenges, cooking, learning about lightweight expeditions we hope to look back on what we were planning to do pre-pandemic and action things that got cut short such as the running of a fundraiser which the scouts had planned, we will re-plan this event so it's fresh in everyone's mind. We hope to maximise our attendance at activities such as shooting, climbing etc. making good use of the excellent facilities available across the District.
I'd like to thank our parents for putting up with the challenges of the last 18 months of scouts through the various phases of the pandemic, especially their help during Zoom sessions. There were many successful Zoom meetings and some less so, even so they were usually a source of some comedy however they turned out. We experienced mug cooking, paddle boat making, mini-pioneering, virtual tour of Buckingham Palace from the Royal Collections (a first for this institution), emergency kit preparing, quizzes and of course some online games.
Thanks also to the parents that give up their Thursday evenings to support the in person meetings, the hike practice, litter picking and the cycling were especially helpful! Parent help is always appreciated and is fun for you too!
We are looking at options for summer camp next year. Hopefully we'll have a really successful year, full of interesting activities that the scouts enjoy.
Many thanks to the help in the past year from Hayden, we are pleased see our young leader Ben back too.
Y.I.S Alex Donald ASL
5th Crawley Scout Group
Financial Statement for the year ended 31 March 2021
| INCOME STATEMENT Notes Income Subscriptions (1) Hut Hire Fundraising Camp Contributions Activity Contributions (2) Bank Interest Grants & Loans (3) Donations received (4) Miscellaneous income Total income Expenditure Building Expenses: Property, plant and equipment Repairs & Maintenance (5) Rent (6) Insurance Electricity Water & Sewerage Cleaning Total building expenses Activity Expenses: Scouts Cubs Beavers Group Camps Total activity expenses (7) Administrative expenses: Capitation Administration Loan Repayments Donations Uniforms & Badges Bank charges Miscellaneous expenses Total administrative expenses Total expenditure SURPLUS/(DEFICIT) FOR THE YEAR BALANCE SHEET as at 31st Mar Accumulated funds Balance at 1st Apr 2020 Surplus/(deficit) for theyear Balance at 31st Mar Represented by: Cash in hand Cash at bank TOTAL ASSETS |
2020-21 11,615 643 0 0 (216) 0 19,908 1,000 0 32,950 1,160 1,039 967 648 372 816 629 5,630 193 116 453 40 0 802 4,680 561 0 490 1,422 0 0 7,153 13,585 19,365 2020-21 11,631 19,365 30,995 517 30,478 30,995 |
2019-20 14,067 955 28 803 2,568 0 1,027 40 0 |
|---|---|---|
| 19,487 1,737 505 2,286 623 96 258 774 |
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| 6,279 357 1,322 1,903 10 707 |
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| 4,299 5,580 392 0 150 1,908 0 0 |
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| 8,030 | ||
| 18,609 | ||
| 879 | ||
| 2019-20 10,752 879 |
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| 11,631 | ||
| 428 11,203 |
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| 11,631 |
5th Crawley Scout Group
Notes to the accounts 2020-21
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(1) -£2,494/-18% decrease in Subscriptions due to reduction in members caused by the pandemic lockdowns.
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(2) Negative income in Activity Contributions (-£330) represent refunds for Go Beavers 2020 contributions collected in the prior year. The event could not go ahead due to the National lockdown.
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(3) £19,908 in grants vs £1,027 last year. Grants this year include:
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£10,000 Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grant, Apr-20
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£1,334 National Restrictions Grant, Nov-20
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£8,097 Business Support Package for Lockdown from 05/01/2021, Feb-21
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£476.50 Local Restrictions Support Grant, Feb-21
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(4) £1,000 donation from SSP Foundation for volunteering activities by one of the leaders.
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(5) £1,039 in repairs & maintenance include installation of smoke, heat and carbon linked detectors, lighting and power for our storage shed, new LED PIR front flood light.
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(6) £1,320 cost saving in rental expenditure (£967 vs £2,286 LY) due to suspended agreement related to the Maidenbower site.
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(7) £3,557 cost saving in activity expenditure (£743 vs £4,299) due to most activities carried in virtual space. As a consequence activity contributions are lower by a similar amount.
5th Crawley Scout Group
Independant Examinerfs Report
I report on Ihe ac<x)unts ofthe P Craw Scout Gr(wp forthe year ended 31 March 2021.
The Group's Trustees are responsible for the preparion of the accounts. The charivs
trustees consider that an audit is not required under SalOn 144(2) d the ChaiTties Act 2011
(the 2011 Ad) and that an independent examination is naodod.
11 is my responsibilty.
to examine the wiunts urKlef section 145 of the Charities Act 2011:
lo fcqlow Ihe Procedu lald down in the general Directions given by the Charittes
Commission under setxton 145(5Mb) of the 2011 Acl arn
lo state whether particular matters have