Announcing our District Hub

12 July 2023

We are super excited to announce the opening of Basingstoke East District Hub. This new venue within the Clock Tower at Chineham Shopping Centre will serve as a Training Venue, workshop and District Headquarters. This new multi-purpose facility is a great development for the District and will bring many different uses to people.

Workshops & Training

We will have a dedicated workshop area which allows us to run training sessions such as first aid and many of our workshops that support our volunteers. This workshop space will also be large enough to hold AGM’s for both the district and groups if they so wish.

Meeting Space

We understand that many groups across the district need meeting spaces, and this often comes with a cost. We will open with two meeting spaces, which will be bookable by anyone in the district whether that be for your trustee board meetings or to bring all your leaders together. The rooms will have facilities to help you hold productive meetings.

Expansion of Services

Some of the areas we are currently looking at, is to expand our badge offering to have much better stock with live availability for you so that badges can be available within days rather than weeks.

Storage

District storage is full! We will be bringing much of the district assets into a central storage location, allowing us to save on hiring additional garages.

Youth Workshop

We want to build a workshop area for our young people for some of those more hard to find facilities badges such as the digital maker badge. We have a few ideas here and will be asking our youth team to come up with this project.

 

We will be holding an open evening on Thursday 7^th September where we invite you to come along and see the venue. There will be refreshments available, and we hope to have most of the district team in attendance plus some special guests. Our open evening will run from 19:00 through to 22:00 so hopefully even if you have section meetings to attend, you’ll be able to pop in before or after.

Let us know using the RSVP below if you are planning in attending. This helps us know how many people to expect.

RSVP

We will be working hard over the July and August to get this facility ready for our opening event and be usable from September. If you have any free time over these months and would like to get involved then we’d love to hear from you! Simply drop an email to dc@bescouts.org.uk and let us know when you are available. It doesn’t matter what skills you may or may not have there is plenty to do and something for anyone that can help.

 

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Questions & Answers

We know many will have questions, especially around the costs involved and how it will impact groups, so we have included some below along with answers. If you have any others please do email dc@bescouts.org.uk and we will continue to add questions here as they come in.

How much is this costing?

This facility is on a three year lease which is gifted to us as a charity due to the impact that Scouting has on people and the volume of Scout and adult volunteers in Basingstoke East. There will be some ongoing running costs which we are looking to cover through various projects but mainly the badge sales. We have been very lucky in sourcing grants for much of the set up and as always district accounts will be available at the end of each year.

Will this new facility increase the census cost?

Our intention is that the ongoing costs of this facility will be fully funded by income from other projects such as badge sales and not impact on the membership fee that is charged as part of census. We cannot commit to the 2024 census figure at this stage, however it is worth noting that the district portion of the membership fee has only risen by 65p in the last 4 years and we will continue to endeavour to keep this as low as possible. Any increases to the 2024 census will not be due to this facility.

How does this facility benefit my group?

We hope that everyone across the district can benefit from this amazing new facility, whether that be by attending workshops or training at a closer location, improved badge stock and service or using the space for your own groups meetings. We are also looking at creating a workspace dedicated for use by young people directly.

Will it cost me to use this facility?

We want to make this as accessible as possible to everyone throughout the district, so there will be no charges in place for its use within our own district and once we’re up and running you will simply be able to book the spaces using your Microsoft account. If we were to allow others outside of our District use the facilities, we would look to charge a minimal amount to cover running costs.

How do I book this?

Over the next month we will be getting all the spaces available to book online and will share this process as soon as it’s available.

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