Girls help push Scouts waiting list to new high

THE Scouts’ waiting list has grown to the longest on record, with 51,000 children unable to join due to a lack of volunteers.

Around 17,000 new volunteers are needed to enable all the children on waiting lists to join a group. One factor behind the surge in interest is thought to be teenage girls wanting to get involved to improve their CVs.

Tim Kidd, the Scout Association’s chief commissioner, said that it was hard to get enough volunteers as they were increasingly trying to juggle fulltime work, family and volunteering.

He said: “Our adult volunteers today seek much more flexible volunteering arrangements than in the past, so that they can fit it around their busy lives.

“Many adults who are signing up with the Scouts have a limited amount of time to donate to us, and so we need more volunteers as a whole.”

The Association said that it attempts to preserve a ratio of one adult to three children. It currently has 154,000 volunteers, the highest number in its history, but would need 17,000 more to maintain this ratio. The greatest demand for volunteers is in Surrey, where 3,433 children are waiting to join.

The movement’s annual census shows that the number of girls joining more than doubled between 2015 and 2016, from 3,283 to 6,728. In the 12 months to January this year almost four times as many girls joined as boys, 5,626 compared with 1,502.

Simon Carter, a spokesman for the Scouts, said teenagers were increasingly aware that they had to look attractive to employers and universities. “Young people want a way of demonstrating to future employers the skills that they have got, and young women are particularly good at that,” he said.

One of the largest growth areas has been Explorer Scouts – aged 14 to 18, where numbers have more than doubled from 17,000 to 40,000 over the past decade.