Annual Census

Every year the Scout Association undertakes a census of its membership to ask for information about members' ethnicity, and their disabilities or long-term illnesses. The categories for ethnicity on the census form match those used by the UK national census, and this will enable the Scout Association to get a much more accurate picture of how closely Scouting truly reflects the local areas in which it operates.

The information collected about disabilities and special needs will help the Scout Association improve and more accurately target the support they provide for adults and young people.

There are a number of ways in which collecting this data will help us to grow and develop Scouting:

• This data will help us to be more effective in planning our projects, programme material and events, so we can meet the needs of both adult volunteers and young people.

• The data will identify the key external bodies and agencies we need to work with in order to ensure that we are following the best practice guidelines with respect to our provisions for people with visible and hidden disabilities.

The census breaks down the Scout Group by Section, by gender within section and by the adult roles within the Scout Group that incur membership fees. The Census feeds into our capitation charges for each membership year. We capture the census information when you first register for the Scout Group and we have largely automated collation and analysis of the information but may need to check it is up to date where circumstances may have changed for an indvidual

We have to complete the census by the end of January each year as this is the trigger for our capitation charge. It is therefore essential that we have collected all annual subscriptions by the end of January to avoid being charged for anyone who decides not to stay.