District Camp - Report

Here’s my report on the District Camp just gone.

Numbers

Excluding Leaders and Explorers, there were 155 campers, which splits down by Group as follows: Darfield 43, Hoyland Common 26, Wombwell 29, Hoyland 38, Ardsley 19. The section split was Beavers 45, Cubs 42, Scouts 68.

That’s an impressive turnout. I think 200plus is achievable next year, and I think we should plan on that basis. I would also suggest we start promoting the event earlier next year; I think we’ll get more going, and it will help with the planning if we can get a better idea of numbers 4 – 6 weeks before the event.

Programme

We were blessed with good weather this year, which always helps, but the programme was in the main successful too. Thanks to all the Leaders for all their hard work. Thanks to Mick for the ‘Scouts Own’, which I thought was pitched to perfection. Thanks to the Explorers who did a great job with the campfire and the assault course. It’s probably unfair to single out individuals but I thought George was excellent as campfire leader. Thanks to the Fellowship for organising the backwoods cooking. On the day they struggled to cope with the numbers of scouts, so if we do anything like that next year we need to run more than one session. Last but not least, thanks to Tim Hague for running the first aid competition for Scouts. He’s far too polite to say so, but on the whole I don’t think he was too impressed with their first aid skills, so maybe that’s something we can work on.

Finances

I haven’t received any further claims for expenses, so I assume everyone is sorted. So the final position is as follows: total income was £890, total expenditure was £461, leaving a surplus of £429, which I propose to redistribute to the Groups pro rata to the camp fees originally paid. You can find a spreadsheet of my working-out here, but I propose to refund the following amounts: Darfield £105.25, Hoyland Common £58.36, Wombwell £78.82, Hoyland £120.22 and Ardsley £66.35. The refund works out at just under 50% of the camp fees originally paid. I will bring the money to the next District Scouters’ Meeting.

Some groups spent more on food than the £8 allocated from the camp fee, I know we did, so I would say the split original agreed was wrong. When I’m budgeting for camps I work on £5.75 per 24-hours for food, so I’d normally have allocated £11.50 for food for this camp.

Camp fees were £300, which is worked out at just under £2pp. This is a fixed cost (providing we book the entire site) so the more go the lower the cost per person.

The activities expenses came to £161, which is just over £1pp – which wasn’t as much as I expected, but I supposed the ‘Back to Basics’ theme helped there. I think for next year we need to come up with a way of allocating the activities budget in advance so we do actually spend it.