Growth

We’re steadily growing in all areas of Scouts across the UK, which is fantastic news. With more adult volunteers and Young Leaders, we can give more young people skills for life.

As we welcome people to our movement, we’re focusing on growing inclusively. We’re making sure we reach and involve all the amazing communities in the UK.

Our growth goals by 2025:

• We’ll have 547,000 young people aged 4–18 in Scouts
• We’ll have 88,000 front line volunteers (Section Leaders, including Assistant Section Leaders and Section Assistants)
• We’ll have 19,500 Young Leaders

Progress on growth

Young member growth

We’ve seen a 5.6% increase (23,018) in young people (4–18 years old) compared to 2022, meaning we’re now giving an incredible 436,015 young people skills for life. A new plan, supported by external funding, will build on this growth to help us achieve our 2025 target.

Other than Squirrels, our strongest growth has been in our section for 14–18-year-olds, Explorers.

We opened 1,314 new sections this year, but we closed 1,219. Encouragingly, the average section size across the UK has grown this year across all of our sections. This suggests that the efforts of lead volunteers to support better programmes and stronger section leadership teams are paying off.

Squirrels

The number of Squirrels has grown by 216% since 2022. This rapid growth underlines the huge popularity of our Squirrels programme among young families since we launched in September 2021.

Explorer Scout Young Leaders

We now have 17,716 Explorer Scout Young Leaders, rising by over 15%. This is particularly encouraging, as they’re the volunteers of the future. Our target is 19,500 by 2025.

Adult volunteer growth

The number of frontline adult leaders has grown by 4.5% (3,457) from 2022 (that's Section Leaders, Assistant Section Leaders, and Section Assistants). This is gradually getting back to pre-pandemic levels.

Waiting lists

Once again, our recorded waiting lists have grown to over 100,000 young people who are missing out on the opportunity to be Scouts. That equals to nearly 6,000 sections, 2,745 of which could be set up now, based on waiting lists with at least 11 young people ready to join.

Activity undertaken to drive inclusive growth

While we’re proud of the growth we’ve achieved so far, there’s more we want to do to make sure Scouts is as accessible and inclusive as possible. By inclusive growth, we specifically mean starting Scouts in areas we’ve not been before, and working with communities so we can learn how Scouts can change and adapt to meet the needs of the people we serve. We’re not stopping until every young person who wants to can join, enjoy and thrive in Scouts.

Supporting growth in underrepresented communities

As part of the Attracting Young Muslims to Scouting (AYMS) project, we’re developing support and guidance to help you open Scouts with members of the Muslim community, generously funded by both Pears Foundation and the Aziz Foundation. In the long term, we’re hoping to adjust and develop these resources to support growth in other underrepresented communities.

Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Uniformed Youth Fund (Phase 1, New Groups)

We secured a £440,000 grant so that, through January to March 2023, the Growth & Communities Team could work with local volunteers to open 30 new sections in the government’s levelling up areas in England. Thanks to this DCMS funding, we created 600 new places for young people, with each section opening with an average of 13 young people. 111 adult volunteers were recruited, too.

What’s next

Leadership focus on inclusive growth

Our Chief and Regional Commissioners have engaged our volunteer leadership (County/Area/Region (Scotland) Commissioners) to renew our strategic focus on growing Scouts. With our support, County/Area/Region (Scotland) Teams now have their own local targets which contribute towards our UK 2025 growth goals.

We’ve updated our Census and external data tools to help lead volunteers find opportunities for inclusive growth locally. This means they’ll be well equipped to lead their teams to plan and deliver growth over the next few years. We’realso holding growth planning conversations with each County/Area/Region (Scotland) Commissioner to support these new tools for local planning.

Scouts’ Underrepresented Communities Fund

We’ve committed £2.5 million from our reserves for Local Growth Officers across all four nations of the UK. This is to speed up our work around opening Scouts in areas designated IMD 1–3 and increase participation among volunteers and young people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. We know Scouts isn’t serving some of these communities as universally as we could be at the moment, and we believe there’s a mutual benefit for Scouts to be present.

Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Uniformed Youth Fund (Phase 2, Waiting Lists)

We’ve secured a grant of more than £6 million over the next two years, which enables us to build another team of Local Growth Officers in England, specifically in government levelling up areas. These Local Growth Officers will work with volunteers to address waiting lists for 10+ year old young people by opening new Scout and Explorer sections.