I would like to extend a massive thank you to everyone who came and helped with our recent maintenance weekend. We achieved an enormous amount; it’s given the group a great start to the year and a refined set of future maintenance needs. Some serious levels of dedication were exhibited, in many cases people staying longer than they intended, displaying pride in what they’d been able to help achieve. One parent even thanked us for letting her help!!! You guys are amazing – thank you.

Over the maintenance weekend, we achieved a whole host of cleaning, clearing, assessing items for replacement/repair and we even sent surplus supplies to a food bank. Our leader den, stores, kitchen and external areas saw some of the biggest improvements.

There’s still much to do, and we plan on putting in place future term time maintenance weekends to address them. We ask that if there’s something on the below list you feel you can help with or address at another point, please let Laura or myself know; we’re grateful for your support and recognise that if we don’t make the job list known, people can’t offer to support where they’ve skills or abilities that are relevant.

Revised to-do list

The following is a reduced to-do list that can be progressed without necessarily needed members of the leader team

  • clear the banking and car park of rubbish and detritus
  • wash down walls, repair screw holes/hook marks and repaint
  • put up new building signage
  • fit a projector screen in the main hall
  • scrap metal is taken to scrap merchants and weighed in
  • sanitise all of the group’s water bottles
  • replace external lighting down the side of the hut and front of the hut with LED products that are common fixtures
  • continuous power supplies extended to locations within the loft space for wireless and local CCTV power
  • repair cracked window frame

Like I mentioned earlier, we can achieve quite a lot given the collective contribution. If there are items within the needful you feel you could take on or address, please let Laura or myself know and we’ll look to take it forward with you. Every item ticked off makes a difference in Scouting in Penistone and the continued enrichment of young people.

In the coming weeks, we will identify some maintenance weekends for the coming 12-18 months. This helps us plan appropriately, forecast financially for those bigger investment needs and feed into a multi-year plan. Once we’ve identified these we’ll share them on our group calendar and ask for your support continuing to achieve great things.

Thank you!