SCUBAHUB
British Sub- Aqua Club Financial Review 2022
The Members of Council present their annual report on the affairs of the British Sub-Aqua Club ( BSAC ), together with the financial statements and auditors ’ report for the year ending 31st December 2022 . The Group position reported is for BSAC and its wholly owned subsidiary , BSAC International Limited . The Company position reported is for BSAC only .
Principal Activity The principal activity of the group in the year under review continued to be that of promoting underwater sport , exploration and science and related studies , safety in those activities , to maintain the highest standards therein , to co-operate with related organisations , and to sustain recognition as the National Governing Body .
Summary of 2022 While the impact of the 2020 global pandemic continues to be felt , we are pleased to report that 2022 saw a continued and sustained improvement in income for BSAC . While external factors such as pandemic recovery are clearly responsible for a large part of this bounce-back , the implementation of the 2021 strategy has also played its part . In particular , the centre-branch partnership has exceeded expectations , helping us to train new members more quickly via centres , branches and universities . We are pleased to see how the networking opportunity of working together in a community has allowed benefits such as sharing equipment , boats and pools and instructors .
These successes are reflected in key indicators such as fully paid members , which increased by 843 from 22,047 to 22,890 . While this is still short of the pre-Covid figure of 24,859 in 2019 , we are cautiously optimistic that the trend will continue . This was driven by an increase in new members , up from 3,439 in 2021 to 4,350 in 2022 , ( 2019 : 4,383 ).
This increase in activity was seen in other areas , including sales of training packs , and is reflected in retail sales increasing by 49 % to £ 270k and course income increasing by 34 % to £ 191k . We were pleased to see the continuing strength of the Instructor Training Scheme ( ITS ) which ran 218 events attended by 1,549 students . It has been positive to see how many ITS events had included university students in attendance , helping support universities , especially at Open Water Instructor ( OWI ) level .
We continued to maintain effort on our core business of supporting clubs to train new members and go diving . Part of our strategy focus was to reach new audiences with our learn to dive proposition via social media channels and ensure that we actively follow up any live leads . During 2022 we engaged actively with our university branches , listening to their needs through a variety of channels including virtual , and we are pleased to report that just under 600 new members joined BSAC via our university project . In 2023 we will continue to focus on the young audience . We will also improve membership retention by increasing our understanding of the experience of members in their first year of joining , as we know this is a critical year in their BSAC experience . We were especially keen to work on retention of graduates in their first year of membership with us and we hope to see the results of this in 2023 .
A key part of the strategy is the theme of environmental responsibility and BSAC has worked with citizen science to support the BSAC Operation Oyster project , where continued research from BSAC members is key to understanding our oyster population .
BSAC has also collaborated with charities such as Seawilding to produce courses , such as Shore Surveyor , together . Shore Surveyor is something which all the family can take part in and help to promote seagrass harvesting . Protecting our oceans will be seen more in 2023 .
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