Changes to our District Team

Our first step in this process is aligning our District team to the new structure so that we can continue to grow and support the district into the future.

The District Leadership Team

Our District Leadership Team or DLT as we often refer to it, continues to be made up of our Group Scout Leaders along with leads from our 14-25 offering such as our Network Commissioner and Young Leader Lead, there is very little change here. The biggest change is in our Deputy District Commissioners areas where People along with the Growth & Development streams are evolving. We will see the introduction of a Volunteering Development Team and a Support Team, both of these along with a Programme Team will be led by their relevant team leaders.

What does this mean to you?

Hopefully right now this will have very little immediate impact on your role as the changes are all at a District level, it is about us realigning and refreshing ready for our next step. Over the coming months we are going to be refreshing our strategy plan for the next few years and this will shared with the DLT in a workshop being held in October. So your Group Scout Leader will have input on this before it’s finalised.

So what are the changes?

Having done an amazing job at providing District events and programme support over the last 12 months, Craig Harris will continue to lead our Programme Team. Our individual section teams led by Jan Wright (Squirrels), Magda Esterhuyse (Beavers), Pam Bryne (Cubs) and Tim Gibbons (Scouts) remain in our programme stream and will continue to be supported by Craig. Craig also continues to look after BEAST, our Adventurous Activities Skills Team.

John Handford has been supporting our People stream over the last 12 months and will remain part of our core team by leading our Volunteering Development Team. John continues to look after GSL support and Learning but will also have a focus on Adult Awards and Volunteer requirement.

Our Growth & Development stream, has been looked after by Georgina Charlton for the past year will move into our wider Support Team. Georgina will continue to lead on Growth & Development (G&D) and Inclusion within that team. Our new Support Team will be led by Julie Jacobs. Julie is joining us from outside the District and has a vast experience in Scouting, previously as a DDC within Basingstoke West, we are really excited to welcome Julie to the team. In addition to G&D and Inclusion, Julie will also be responsible for Digital, Community Engagement and the Scout Shop.

The 14-25 Team will continue to be led by Jack Dilly, our Youth Lead supported by Nathan Robinson. All these leads, supported by the Chair of the Trustee Board will make up our District Core Team (DCT) who are responsible for the day to day running of the district along with the strategic direction.

Our final change and to help us build on collaboration in the future is creating clusters of our groups. These are initially for us to manage workshops and such like with our GSL’s, with the desire to create real collaboration between them. Jack will be looking after 7th Basingstoke, 11th Basingstoke, Bramley, Old Basing, Air Scouts & 1st Popley whilst Paul is looking after 1st Basingstoke, 2nd Basingstoke, 6th Basingstoke, 8th Basingstoke & 1st Chineham.

Key responsibility wise – Paul remains your contact for Safeguarding and Appointments whilst Jack continues to look after Activity and Nights Away Permit approvals.

You can view our entire District Leadership Team by clicking here.

Conclusion

We are really pleased at what the last 12 months has delivered and we could not have made such an impact without all our volunteers across the District, so thank you! We are confident that the changes to our District Leadership Team will continue to take us forward and we look forward to sharing the district strategy with you all in the very near future. In the meantime if you have any questions please do not hesitate to reach by email to dc@bescouts.org.uk or come along as see us at the Hub opening.

We want to finish this update with a few key call outs for the last 12 months, and again this is down to every single volunteer in the District!