2025 AGM
1 | Introduction and welcome |
2 | In Attendance: Scouting Community: |
3 | Apologies for absence |
4 | Governance topics |
4.1 | Approve the minutes of the Annual General Meeting held on 25th June 2024 |
4.2 | Group’s financial year |
5 | Review of the previous year |
5.1 | Group Lead Volunteer’s review As District Lead Volunteer this means that that when a group like yourselves does not have a Group Lead Volunteer, I have to become your acting GLV. Currently I have five other groups in the district that I am acting GLV for, which means I don’t have the time to cover these groups and do my role in the district. This means I must rely on others in the groups to do this role for me and for your group Emma has kindly been covering for the last five years. Emma has been doing this as well as her current role as Group Chair which she has held for the last six and a half years. Sadly, as you may or may not be aware Emma will be standing down from this role in September. In the last six years Emma has played a key part in the group, getting it through Covid and working hard to reopen it and return it to the great place it is now. Emma has also worked with others to renew the lease from the Council and leaves the group in a great place for years to come. There are many other things she has done, too many for me to list here. I would like to say a great big thank you for everything Emma has done for the group, and she will be sorely missed. With Emma leaving there is a space to fill as Group Chair. Technically a trustee board cannot run without a chair, I can continue to keep the group open whilst we look for a replacement but over time if this role cannot be filled, we may have to look to suspend the group. I therefore ask you all to please consider taking on this role or ask you friends and family if they would be interested in helping the group. If you are interested, then please speak to Emma or contact myself for more information. I would also like to take this chance to thank all the other leaders and members of the trustee board for all the work they have done over the last year and look forward to seeing the group grow over the next year. Thanks David
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5.2 | Receive and consider the Annual Report of the Group Trustee Board, including the annual Statement of the Accounts Section Leaders and the Chair resented their Annual Reports and the Financial Reports were also presented (See Appendix A). Scouts – Nights Away training – hope to complete next year which will lead to more camps. Hoping to complete hiking training with County so can do hill-walking Hoping to do a national and international jamboree next summer. Ex-Scout will be completing Young Leader training. Beavers – cost of camp and location was not conducive to taking Beavers to camp. Lost one Leader due to personal reasons. Have help from a YL and two DofE students. Assessing roles and leaders to help due to BR taking on a new work role. Hard to get parents to commit on a regular basis. Finances – Deficits are due to financial year Badges & Neckers – comes from £5 investiture fee Does it come from Section kitty? No – just a cost to us. DT requested a list of section members in September.
Accounts have been audited.
Gift Aid – need to get on top of – sections to push in September. Deadline end of September. DT & EH to then work out how to do it! Subs – 5th Frome – gone up to £15 a month – could we up ours? Agreed not to increase for the moment. Hut hire – best for a long time. No option for increasing hourly hire rate. Safeguarding training – to be completed by 14th July. |
6 | Appointments |
6.1 | Appoint the Group Chair EH will stay in role but a plan for finding a successor needs to be in place. EH to discuss with DF. EH will also stay as a named Trustee until the Land Registry process has been completed.
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6.2 | Appoint the Group Treasurer DT was nominated by EH, seconded by WS and approved by all. A successor for DT needs to be considered in the coming year.
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6.3 | Appoint the Auditor John Horsey has audited the accounts for a number of years, free of charge, and all agreed that this should continue. |
| AOB Discussed putting up barding on walls to waist height. Aim to spend a couple of weeks in the Autumn painting the Hut. AM suggested in investing in decals for the wall to improve the appearance. Tidy back room – does it need shelving? Grounds needs maintenance Green tent has gone. Trailer has been used. Container leak has been solved. Container needs sorting – need to sort cooking stuff, buy black boxes, look at state of tents. Need OS maps of area. Fundraising – possible to help at Carnival – safeguarding concerns about selling programmes. May be able to sell toys. JW in conversation. Might need to recruit for Beaver numbers in the near future. |
Appendix A
Chair Report 2024-25
It has been another great year for 1st and 7th Frome Scouts and I’m so pleased that we are here to celebrate the successes of the past year. I would like to say a huge thank you to our dedicated Leaders who put so much effort and time in to making our Scout group a success and giving the young people an amazing experience and memories and skills which will last a lifetime.
One of the key roles of the Trust Board is to ensure that the Leadership Team have all they need to be able to run Scouting activities. Financially we are in a fairly stable position. Payment via Direct Debit mostly ensures that Subs are paid on time, which not only makes the treasurers job a lot easier but ensures we have the funds to be able to support our Group activities and to pay the annual Capitation bill, the annual membership fee to Scouts Headquarters.
We are lucky to have our own Hut to hold weekly meetings in and which we hire to local community groups and for one-off events e.g. birthday parties. The hire fees we charge are low but cover the running costs.
As you may be aware, we have carried out some substantial repairs in the recent years (full electrical rewiring, replacement of roof, soffits, guttering, repairing and weather-proofing external cladding, repairing container, removing trees). The next project is to replace the floor. We have received some grant funding and are seeking to achieve the full costs of the project (currently anticipated to be £12, 400). If anyone is able to assist with grant writing, fundraising, building work or material supplies, we would love to hear from you.
I have been Chair of 1st & 7th Frome Scouts since September 2019, and was Group Secretary prior to this and have been involved with the Group as a apparent for 11 years. During this time, we have tackled the challenges of Covid, the closure of the Group due to a lack of Leaders and the consequent re-starting and progression to the Group we have today. We have re-signed the lease of the land with Somerset Council (a process which took around 2 years!), including a negotiation of the land boundaries. I have worked closely with David Truelove, our Treasurer, to not only ensure we have enough funds to cover the day-today running of the Group, but to be able to make repairs to our Hut.
I became involved with the Group when my son as a Beaver and now we are looking at University options for him and I feel it is time for me to step down as Chair, and consider other volunteering positions in Frome. Scouting (& Guiding) is important to me and my family and I am honoured to have been a small part of it. The position of Chair is still available and I would be very happy to discuss the role with anyone who is interested. It is an essential role, and without it, the Group will not be able to function.
I am aware that each section receives help from parents on a regular basis at meetings which is really appreciated but also essential to being able to run the meetings. Thank you to those who have stepped forward. I hope your children are enjoying their time as either a Beaver, Cub or Scout. Thank you for your support.
Emma Hardy
Chair
Scouts Update – June 2025
Over the past year the Scout section has continued to go from strength to strength over. The section has recently welcomed in 5 new members, including our first female scouts. We currently have 20 scouts on our books. We will soon be saying our goodbyes to our scouts moving on. Zac is moving on to continue passion for army cadets and we are pleased to say that Johnny will be returning, this time as a young leader for the group
Over the past year we have continued to develop our scouts with a strong emphasis on the scouting values, and it has been fantastic to see how our scouts have developed across the last year. They have developed their independence, their teamwork, resilience and sense of community.
The section has just returned from the annual JAWs Activity camp, where experiences a wide range of activities, including rafting, climbing and abseiling, caving, shooting and archery. I know the scouts are already talking about next year’s JAWs camp!
Sadly we were not able to run the annual Easter camp this year. This was due to the leadership team being trained to complete their Nights Award Certification. Every scout camp must have a leader who is Nights Away trained. We are now one step away from having more freedom to take our scouts camping and so you can expect more camps in the offing over the coming years! Expect to see Easter Camp back on for 2026.
During scout evenings of the last year, we have had an interesting and varied programme. Scouts have been working on a wide range of activity and stage badges. We have had a focus on the personal challenge activity badge, developing their independence. We have also undertaken a wide range of activity badges, including first aid, chef, DIY and world faith badges. We are currently working towards our Master at Arms badge, so watch out all!
One thing we are very proud about this year, is that we completed a community project for the a local primary school, where with the help of the leaders, the scouts constructed a mud and sand kitchen for Trinity First School. The scouts gained their DIY and community badge from this activity and I know the kitchens have been a fabulous addition to Trinity’s playground!
Adam Marsh
Scout Leader
Cubs Report 2025
We start the Scouting year with 16 Cubs and we have waved goodbye to 3 Cubs to Scouts in the Autumn term 2024, we also welcomed 3 Beaver into the pack to provide some welcome changes to the pack dynamic.
We have now full delivered a 2 year program cycle which means we are able to recycle the program to a degree without repeats for the Cubs. This makes it easier to plan and deliver the program and tweaking the parts that didn’t work that well previously. Some of the highlights area visit from the Air Ambulance to give a flavour of what they do and first aid along with visiting the Frome fire station, visit for Pets at home and visiting Frome archers for an archery session. We have also been incredibly lucky to end our year with a trip to the Frome Slip and slide. Which we plan to do again this year. It made drew our year to a fantastic close.
We took part in our third district Cub camp where we again took 13 Cubs. This is a major point in our year and a focal point of how we run our program.
We also maintain Gary as a Team Member from last years camp who is now a regular member of the team and we have been joined by Abi as an additional Team Member which ensures we have adequate cover for our Cubs nights and can plan to do more things outside the hut and I would like to thank them both for their hard work and support during the last year.
We have also maintained the same core leader team of Dan and Verna over the last year and we continue to run with all volunteers knowing their part and helping the program run smoothly.
We have also been supported throughout the year by all the Cubs parents and careers through the year.
As part of our Program we are always working towards the Chief Scout Silver awards and once again we were able to award these at Camp this year. A huge congratulations to Gracie, Esme, Owen and Theo on their achievements and we are hoping for a couple more by the end of this year.
These achievements are amazing and are the reasons why we do those things. Well done!
Thanks
Dave Bird
Cubs lead volunteer
Beaver Colony Report 2025
This year marks the Beavers second full year back since we restarted and it has been a fun packed year.
We have had stable our numbers in Beavers over the last 12 months. Our numbers will be dropping slightly in the winter term when a large group of beavers move up to cubs but we do have several young people due to join the colony over the year from our waiting list.
Some of our highlights over the last 12 months have been a visit from Guide dogs for the blind, local walks, learning about Baden Powell, first aid and our recent music night to name but a few.
The Beavers have worked incredibly hard and this year most of the Beavers with most beavers completing at least 3 badges per term.
Looking forward to the next 12 months we are looking forward to continuing developing our weekly programme, having our first nights away event, taking part in district events, expanding our numbers and awarding many more badges.
On behalf of the beavers I would like to say a huge thank you to Warren for all his help as assistant leader over the last 12 months, Thomas our fantastic young leader for all his help and also to the numerous parents and DofE helpers who have volunteered to help out at sessions.
Finally, we like to thank you the parents for your support and patience as we got the colony running again this year and most importantly we would like to thank all of the Beavers for coming each week and taking part in all of the activities offered.
Ben Reynolds
Beaver Scout Leader