Growth

Aim: We’re steadily growing 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 communities in the UK, including Indices of multiple deprivation (IMD) areas.

IMDs are widely-used datasets to classify the relative deprivation of small areas in the UK. They give areas a deprivation score – 1 being most deprived, and 10 being least deprived. A key part of our work is focused on growing Scouts in IMD 1–5 areas.

Goals

Our strategy to 2025 includes growth targets by January 2026:

• 487,000 young people aged 6–18
• 60,000 Squirrel Scouts
• Young Leaders – we recorded 19,775 Explorer Scout Young Leaders at our last Census, exceeding our target of 19,500 by January 2026
• 88,000 frontline adults
• 500 more Sections created in IMD 1–3
• At least 5% of our adult volunteers being from Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic backgrounds

These are the staff-supported workstreams that encompass the delivery for Growth:

• The Growth and Communities Team
• The Uniformed Youth Fund Team (funded by DCMS)
• The Underrepresented Communities Fund (funded by Scouts)
• Early Years Programme of Work

Progress a year on

We’ve worked across a number of different delivery streams to support volunteers to help grow and develop Scouts locally.

216 new Scout and Explorer Sections were supported by the DCMS Uniformed Youth Fund team, startup and programme grants across the movement. This gives strong support for our older youth Sections in England.

• 128 new Sections opened in England by the Growth and Communities Team from April 2023 to March 2024, with 83 of these in IMDs 1–5. The Growth and Communities Team has worked with Lead Volunteers within our Regions, Counties and Districts to drive this.
• We’ve made progress towards having at least 5% of our adult volunteers from Black, Asian or minority ethnic communities, with this figure rising to 3.8% in Census this year.
• We’ve set up an Underrepresented Communities team with 19 Local Growth Officers in Counties across England, as well as in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Their focus is on opening new Sections specifically in IMDs 1–3 or in areas that serve predominantly Black, Asian or minority ethnic communities.
• We’ve continued to grow Squirrel Dreys across the country, with 6,105 more young people joining our youngest Section. As of Census 2024, this brought the total number of Squirrel Scouts to 16,691.
• Over 8,700 more young people are taking part in Scouts compared to last year, bringing us to a total of 445,056 young people and 152,763 adult volunteers. This means we grew by 2% last year.
• 1171 more sections in IMD 1-5 locations have opened since the Covid-19 pandemic.

What's next

Continuing to support the movement to grow and deliver a fun, inspiring and safe programme in all communities by:

• Continuing to open new, and re-energise existing, Sections across the country.
• Continuing to grow Squirrel Dreys across the UK.
• Driving growth in Scouts and Explorers in lower IMD areas through the final year of the DCMS Uniformed Youth Fund.
• Driving growth in lower IMD areas and Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, including developing pilots for growing Scouts in Black communities.