St Agnes SLSC is a charity, all aspects of the club are run entirely by volunteers. Membership fees are set by the committee and reviewed annually. At the committee meeting on 1st September the committee unanimously approved a membership fee rise of £5 per member plus an additional £10 for those attending coached sessions.
We realise this is another unwelcome price rise at a difficult time, but believe this is essential to maintain the sustainability of the club. Please do have a look at how we arrived at this decision, comments / alternative proposals are welcome! The club does offer a hardship fund and may be able to arrange staged payments in exceptional circumstances. We are also looking at whether we can introduce a pay-monthly option, but are not sure our current membership platform supports this.
In our discussions, we felt the following principles were important:
What are the running costs of the club?
In the illustration below we have excluded membership costs – this comprises £30 per-member, paid to the SLSGB, these costs have been included as a deduction from income. We have also excluded Training/Pool Hire as we will model that separately. 2023 Actuals are taken from our annual submission to the Charity Commission website and were subject to independent inspection.
2023 saw exceptional investment in equipment so we’ve budgeted for a reduced amount going forward. However, we have increased the budget for equipment and premises repairs, these are born out from ytd 2024 expenditure.
Income from membership subs
For all membership (excluding social), £30 goes to our governing body SLSGB. This conveys limited insurance and the development of the training and governance we use to run coaching and patrol frameworks. In this illustration we are splitting the subs for Youth In Group into £70 membership subs and £40 session fees.
The committee felt that predicted income of £28.7K against forecast expenditure of £28.3K is too tight and unanimously supported increasing the membership fee across all categories by £5.
The cost of pool hire
In 2022 we moved the start date of pool sessions back from after the October Half Term to the beginning of October – an extra three sessions. The costs of pool hire have increased over the same period from £70 per hour to £96 per hour.
In 2023, pool hire cost £15,192. For 2024/5, we think a budget of £18K is realistic.
Income from session fees
The committee felt that this was too great a shortfall and unanimously agreed to raise session fees by £10 for 2024/5.
Proposed subs for 2024/5:
| Nippers & Juniors (Age 5-16) | Use of premises, classes and equipment under supervision of parent and qualified lifeguard | Not in coaching group – £75 In coaching group – £125 |
| Senior (16+) | Use of premises and equipment under supervision of qualified lifeguard. | £75 |
| Family Senior (16+) | A special reduced price senior membership when joined at the same time as Nipper / Junior dependents. Expected to make a contribution to the club. | £50 |
| Shrimps | For Y1 Shrimps who’ll be starting their first beach sessions in the summer (so no pool sessions). | £50 |
| Social / Supporter | Use of premises ONLY (changing facilities, kitchen and showers) not the use of any boards or to participate in any training sessions or events. | £35 |
