Annual Report 2022

AGM 1-10-2022

Chair / GSL’s report


Lease

We have a new lease but the solicitor is still waiting to resolve the land registry anomaly. He took on the job as a favour to the county chairman but it has proved to be a lot more involved than expected and we are likely to need to pay him a substantial amount.

Leadership

We had a successful recruiting day at Didsbury Festival which resulted in 2 new leaders. We still need more leaders, in all sections.   Some sections on paper look to have a good number but they are all not all able to turn up every week due to their work commitments often leaving the section with the minimum leader operating ratio which is not desirable. Rolando and Gemma have now moved to Colwyn Bay . Brian Cosgrove has taken on the role of running the explorer unit helped by Sarah Harris(leader recruited from Didsbury festival), Keith and Karen (leader at  241st). The lack of leaders has meant that the Tuesday troop now meets on a Wednesday with the  Wednesday troop.

Garden

The garden is looking better than ever, the garden was judged as part of the  Didsbury in bloom . We do not know the results yet. A big thank you to Helen Hampson and Rosemary Fielding and Penny Robinson for all the work they put in throughout the year to keep it looking so good.

Many thanks, to all our leaders and supporters, who are all volunteers.  Well done.

Keith Hampson                                                                        Chris Pearse

Group scout Leader                                                                 Chair

 

Treasures report

After taking over as Group Treasurer from Matthew Rushton last October it has been a challenge for me as the handover has had some difficulties, which we will hopefully over come in the near future.

As regards to the Groups finances they are in a healthy position.

The Groups income for the financial year 21/22 has come from subscriptions and I will be submitting a gift aid claim in due course.  The way in which we collect the subscriptions from parents has changed from paying by standing order into the groups bank account to being collected via the Go Cardless system.

There has been no major expenditure, we have just paid out for the running costs of the Group and buildings.

It was decided at a recent executive meeting that we will ring fence £10,000.00 for legal fees that may be incurred extending the lease of the building.

Pat Ramsden

Group Treasure

 

Beaver report

We have taken into beavers 8 new beavers this term. We still have28 on the waiting list which is now closed except for siblings. We will assess the situation after Christmas.
We have had a busy year concentrating on badge work, but unfortunately no beavers gained their bronze chief scout award, which is the highest award in beavers. The Beavers have gained numerous badges including teamwork, world and personal challenge badges; activity badges - animal friend, cyclist, book reader, experiment, gardener and hobbies; staged activity badges - swimmer, hikes, emergency aid. We have not been able to have a trip out or an overnight as we have not had enough leaders to organise these events. The situation has changed as previously the leadership team had difficulties attending each week. We now have four parents who come on a regular basis and another person who is starting soon. We now are able to plan a trip and an overnight in December. We still have a parent rota but we may soon only be calling on parents when we need extra help.

149 badges have been earned over the year.

Thank you to all my leaders and to those who are able to help us

Helen Hampson

Beaver Scout Leader


Cub report

The cubs have been very pleased to be able to get back to our usual meetings this year, and ran a very successful joint camp in the Lake District in June. We all travelled up together on the coach on the Friday night, which is something we haven’t done before, and excitement was high by the time we arrived! There were lots of activities, which everyone enjoyed, including bridge building and climbing, and a big campfire together on the Saturday night. 

We also had some amazing parent helpers who got stuck in and lent their skills in wrangling and feeding large groups of Cubs and who hopefully learnt some new bridge building, campfire singing and climbing skills in return! We really appreciated all the leader and parent help for the camp and it couldn’t have run without them, so thank you to everyone involved.

We also had a number of joint meetings over the summer preparing for camp and also in the park, looking at the wildlife and plants and seeing how they changed across the seasons when we returned a couple of weeks ago. We have recently been focusing on getting some badge work done and are looking forward to running our sixers and seconders camp for the first time in a couple of years to help the older cubs work towards their Chief Scout Silver before they move up to Scouts.

There are now 26 Celts (Monday) and 33 Saxons (Thursday), with one young leader. Celts have a new parent helper and Saxons have two new (much needed) leaders this year. We also sadly said goodbye to one of our longstanding leaders, Rama, who has moved out of the area. However, we are still down on adult helpers and are only taking new cubs who have come up from the Group’s beaver colonies, until we have additional adult help.

This year we have awarded 304 badges, with a further 65 due to be awarded in the next few weeks (once we have had a restock!).

Claire Lydon (Celts, Monday cubs)

Matthew Cameron (Saxons, Thursday cubs)

 

Scout report

It has been a fun, yet tough year for the scout troop/s. As a result of the pandemic and a number of volunteers leaving the group, we had to merge our two troops into one. Phoenix troop meets on a Wednesday, and we have done our best to keep an interesting programme of activities. That said, we have been unable to offer many camps or overnight activities.

We are looking forward to a much more active and outdoor 2023 and we hope you’ll join us. If you would like to see us back to our full strength, in one or even two troops, we’ll need your help to make that happen.

Over the last 12 months the scouts have earned 171 badges.

Simon Jermy
Phoenix Scout Leader

 

DVESU (Didsbury Viking explorer scout unit)

This year we report that Gemma has moved away and is no longer our Explorer scout leader. Brian Cosgrove from Tuesday scouts has taken over the running of the unit until we can find a dedicated team to run the unit.

He is helped by Sarah Harris (recruited from Didsbury festival), Karen Heil from 241st helps regularly but not every week and Keith is down most weeks too.

  • 22 Explorers
  • 39 badges have been awarded which includes 13 young leader and 6 Emergency aid
  • Rohit for achieving the Platinum Award and Gold DofE (though school)
  • Due to the change in the leadership team we’ve been playing catch up again.
  • It is hoped that some explorers will do their Bronze DofE expedition next month

Explorer scout leader
Brian Cosgrove