Scouts planning to cut 50 jobs to tackle £3m deficit

The Scout Association is considering making 50 staff redundant as it tackles a £3m deficit amid the Covid-19 crisis.

The charity has become the latest in the voluntary sector to plan for redundancies due to income losses during lockdown.

During the pandemic the charity has been forced to cancel events, meetings and fundraising activities.

The job losses will be mainly in back office and commercial areas, with more redundancies possible later in the year.

In a statement the Scout Association said that it is facing a £3m deficit even it resumes face-to-face activities and meetings in September.

“If we start again later than this, the situation is likely to be more serious still,” the statement says.

The young people’s charity adds that it had already furloughed more than half of its headquarters staff and stopped all non-essential spending. An increase in its membership fee is also being planned.

Its statement adds: “One of our biggest areas of spending, is our staffing costs. While making cuts in this area was always going to be our last resort, we have no other option. And so we are in the midst of consultation with staff, mainly in our commercial and back office areas, about making just under 50 redundancies. Depending on what funding we can secure, we may have to go further later in the year.

Conference centre closure

In addition the charity is to close its hotel and conference centre at Gilwell Park, near London, “as a result of reduced bookings and increased costs”.

“This is to make sure that we do not spend money on a business that is no longer profitable at a time when resources are most needed to support essential services,” adds the Scout Association.

Its Gilwell Park buildings will not be sold and instead be repurposed to support the charity’s headquarters and adventure centre.

Another cost cutting measure the charity is taking is to accelerate plans to stop publishing the paper version of its Scouting magazine and to instead deliver it digitally by email.

This is “to remove the cost of production and postage and “to respond to new ways to communicate in a digital age”.

This week it emerged that around a third of charities are considering job cuts over the next 12 months, according to an ACEVO and Centre for Mental Health survey.