The following is the text of my speech to the County AGM this year which may be of interest to members who did not manage to attend the meeting.

Mr President, honoured guests, brother & sister Scouts.

 Once again, I hope you will have read the annual report or if not you will take the time to read it when you get home. I would especially like to thank all those who have contributed to this year’s report either through providing text or photographs.

 Joan has already referred to the work undertaken on the administrative side over the last year and I would like to record my thanks to her, to Louise our Administrator and the members of the county executive committee and sub-committees for their work as we have sought to ensure that Gloucestershire Scouting is conducted on the soundest possible footing both financially and organisationally.

 One of my principal tasks is to appoint and support our team of District Commissioners. I have this year been sorry to say good bye to Barry Smith in Gloucester, Tony Clarke in Tewkesbury, Peter Grierson in Cotswold and Paula Pitcher in Stroud & Tetbury who have all stood down over recent months for a variety of reasons. I should like to thank all of them for their service to their Districts and the County. Various people across the county have been busily helping us identify some likely candidates for these demanding roles over the summer and I am pleased to welcome Bruce Warden to the role in Gloucester and I will shortly have an announcement to make in respect of Tewkesbury. We have a plan for Stroud & Tetbury which I am still working on which only leaves Cotswold without. If anyone knows of anyone who might conceivably be willing or able to have a go at the role even if they don’t actually live in the Cirencester or Fairford area, please let me know. It’s a lovely District but they are missing some leadership at the moment.

DCs also need District Teams of Deputy and Assistant Commissioners and District Scouters not merely to run the district programme of activities and events but to support and encourage leaders in their Groups and their respective DCs. We need to strengthen these teams over the coming year if we are to see real progress across the county.

 On the subject of progress I am pleased to report that Scouting in Gloucestershire continues to grow in numbers with an increase of just under 2% in our total membership over the last year. And if you take a slightly longer perspective the figures are even more impressive. Over the last 10 years our total membership has grown by 41% from 4,676 to 6,612 in 2014– that’s 1,939 more people in Scouting in Gloucestershire than there were in 2004 or to put it another way since 2004 we have added 24 Beaver Colonies, 8 Cub Packs and 14 Scout Troops across the county. However, according to our census, we still have 552 young people who are old enough to join Scouting but can’t because there aren’t the places for them particularly in Beavers and Cubs. Think what that would do for your District if you had all those extra young people within your Groups. To do that of course, you may need extra leaders or different places to meet or maybe we should be looking at different ways of offering Scouting, at weekends or after school and that has got to be our focus.

 And that is why the new National Strategy “Scouting for All” and our own plan “The Gloucestershire Way” are so important. The national strategy is the next stage in turning our Vision for 2018 into reality. The vision came out of widespread consultation with the Movement four or five years ago and has been the subject of ongoing debate and refinement. The national strategy, which was published in April this year, contains quite a bit of detail but cleverly focusses on just four Strategic Objectives entitled – Growth, Inclusivity, Youth Shaped and Community Impact which are reflected in the four strategies within the county plan of Raising our Profile, Leadership and Citizenship, Growth and Maximising the use of our Resources.

 So let’s return for a moment to the national Objectives. Our Growth challenge is to increase our national membership from the current figures of 434,000 youth members and 130,000 adult volunteers to half a million young people and 150,000 adults leading, guiding and supporting them.   If Gloucestershire were to increase by the same proportions that would mean us adding 774 to our current total of under 18s by 2018 and an extra 178 adults. That would require an increase of 14% over the four years or very crudely 3.5% a year. That’s not impossible – between 2008 and 2010 we added more than 6% a year to our youth totals. But it won’t happen by itself. It will require specific effort, new initiatives and an equal focus on retaining our existing members if we are to achieve such a target.

 The Inclusivity Challenge requires us to look for opportunities to offer Scouting in places where it no longer exists or it has never existed. In city and town centres and on new estates. We are told that Scouting has one of the highest figures for “brand recognition” in the country but more than 50% of people do not see Scouting as relevant to them or the modern world and one of the reasons for that is that we do not reflect the communities in which we live and operate. This is a real challenge but it is essential to our survival as a “youth” organisation because young people are the first to be turned off by something that is considered old fashioned or “un-cool”.

 For the same reason, we really need to get to grips with being “youth shaped”: that is training, equipping and allowing young people to have a real say in the direction of their Scout experience. We have been promoting “youth involvement” for some time and Chris Brewster and Liz Hodge have been leading sessions for Groups and Districts on how we might do this better. It has been very encouraging to see more young people being brought onto District Executive Committees. But that is only the beginning. A youth shaped organisation is not one in which young people are forced to conform to the existing structures and procedures of that body. A youth shaped organisation is one that actually works with its younger members to create a structure in which they can fully participate on their own terms – on that is more informal – more spontaneous – more dynamic. We also need to train our young people to take on such roles. When we discuss the issue of youth involvement with many of our longer-serving leaders they will refer back to the old Patrol Leaders’ Councils and their District and County equivalents, to Unit Executive Committees in the Venture Scout and now Explorer Scout section. Perhaps it was right to lose the formality that surrounded these bodies but they did provide valuable training for youngsters in making their voices heard, planning events and recording decisions and generally raised an expectation that they would be consulted and involved in the running of their Scouting and I want to see some real progress in this regard during the coming year.

 Community Impact is a tricky one. As it says in “Scouting for All” – “Since the Movement began, Scouts have promised to help other people”. I can remember in 1982, the 75^th Anniversary of Scouting, branded as “The Year of the Scout”, those of you who had cars, had car stickers that simply said “Scouts help others”. That slogan perfectly summed up for many of us what Scouting was all about and those car stickers were around for many years after that. So, we have always undertaken tasks and projects for the benefit of the community. I know, where I live the local Scout Group delivers the parish magazine for the local council. My wife’s Group is a strong supporter of the bi-annual village shows. These are activities that help build up the communities in which we operate. We need to be prouder of what we do, first by recording what Groups do, then by publicising it and then look for new ways to develop and supplement what has always been done and use these opportunities to supplement and enhance your own programmes. The Poppy Badge is a great example of this. Many Groups have regularly paraded their flags on Remembrance Sunday. This year, in conjunction with the Royal British Legion, we have developed a whole programme around the theme of Remembrance to encourage members to find out about the impact of war and other conflicts on their community and Scouting, to share that knowledge with the community, to invite servicemen and women into their meetings and raise some money for the Legion or other service charities. Through such programmes I believe Scouting can have a real impact on its community. And it is all part of this business of making us more relevant to the wider community – answering the question of “What is Scouting for?”

 So, what about the year ahead? What does that have in store for us? At least we won’t have to worry about separating from Scotland now, although I see Joan has taken the case for the English Regions to her heart, at least within Scouting.

 We know we are going to seem some significant changes to the 6-18 youth programme. All sorts of ideas have been discussed but we have yet to see the final outcomes but it is sure to mean quite a bit of work for the ACCs and ADCs when it is finally published. Please be ready for that. And I am told there are changes in the pipeline for the Scout Network too, although not in the next 12 months.

 We are also looking forward to the new, if somewhat delayed, membership database, Compass, going live. The latest is that the switch on process will begin next Monday although it will be some time before it becomes available to everyone. Please keep an eye on your emails and all other methods of communication for details of how to access the system and the training that is going to be on offer around the county and my thanks to Adrian Austin our County Compass Champion, Steve Powell our Compass trainer and all the Compass Champions across the Districts for sticking with us on this – your work is almost done.

 As I have already mentioned, will have a raft of new District Commissioners picking up the reins which will inevitably lead to all sorts of changes, possibly on a scale we have not seen for some time. Whenever a DC is appointed these days they have to undergo a very comprehensive induction process which includes the creation of their own development plan. This can only lead to more debate and consultation and more action for positive change, incorporating many of the objectives from the National Strategy and the County Plan, which will have a direct impact on the front-line.

 We look forward to what I have been calling “son of Sun Run” but is now officially called “Strategy and Evolution” – two events in June next year about which we will be hearing more later. Yet another example of little old Gloucestershire punching well above its weight.

 We will be delivering some new training for District and Group Executive Committee members, the trustees of Scouting locally. We know while that some Groups have excellent committees, others really do not appreciate what they have taken on. We want to put that right and will be holding our first session in the north of the county next month which we hope to repeat at a venue near you during the coming year.

 And finally we need to start planning seriously for how we are going to celebrate the Cub Centenary year in 2016. The Guides have done a great job this year in marking their Brownie Birthday. We would do well to pick their brains on how to capitalise on this opportunity. We are already planning a Centenary Cub Camp up in the Cotswolds but we want to see lots of other centenary activities and events happening throughout the year too and lots of positive publicity as a result.

 And alongside all of this we will have the day to day, week to week, steady state programme of meetings, events, camps, training courses and reviews which we must not take for granted. All require people like you to give up your time and energy purely for the satisfaction of a “job well done”.

 A couple of Saturdays ago saw the “Last Night of the Proms” when towards the end of the concert the concert the conductor, Sakari Oramo, gave a speech in which among other things he explained how an education in music incorporated almost every other subject on the curriculum from Art to PE. And listening to that speech prompted me to think the same of Scouting and the training it provides. We should not therefore be afraid to remind the wider community that Scouting is not just about playing games and messing about in tents. Scouting is so many things: it is Geography, it is History, it is Maths, it is Languages, it is Science, it is Computing, it is Engineering, it is Art, it is Sport, it is Music, it is Citizenship, it is Communication, it is Team work, it is Leadership, it is achieving personal challenges and it is learning for life. All this and more we do for 5,500 young people in 304 sections, in 90 locations, all across Gloucestershire, week in, week out and you deserve to be congratulated for that.

 In conclusion, I should like to thank you, my colleagues in the county team for all their encouragement and enthusiasm during the last year, to the county executive for their support and guidance, and to the DCs and your teams for all you do in your various areas of responsibility.

 Thank you very much indeed.