Mountaineering Scotland membership prices rise

With exciting plans for our future, set out in our Strategic Plan 2017-21, we feel now is the right time to review our membership price freeze (which has been in place since April 2012).

For the second year running, our Board of Directors has projected a deficit budget in 2016-17. This was agreed in order to invest surplus funds to increase Mountaineering Scotland activities and cover some significant cost increases outside our control, but it is not sustainable. A rise in membership prices (alongside an increase in membership numbers) is one of the actions we are taking to balance the books while continuing to grow what we do.

Increases in our costs include:

• Reduction in the grant we receive for access and conservation work from the Scottish Mountaineering Trust (SMT) for the last two years.
• Rise in staff and office expenses including auto-enrolment pension costs, IT and database management fees.
• Further increase in Insurance Premium Tax (from 1 October 2016) and a possible rise in our insurance premiums (including the combined liability insurance for members and clubs).

With this context in mind, we are confident that our new prices will continue to offer members excellent value for money in light of the services we offer – Scottish Mountaineer magazine, subsidised courses, liability insurance and campaigning on behalf of the mountaineering community to list just a few.

Other club price changes

In addition to the overall change in membership subscriptions for members of affiliated clubs, we are making two other adjustments to our clubs pricing structure:

1. Review the pro-rata reduction in prices for new members of clubs (which was first introduced in 2015-16) to retain the principle of fairness for members who join within the club membership year, while simplifying the prices and raising the minimum fee (from £1.19 for an adult) which does not cover our costs: 

2. Merge our child and youth membership categories for under 18s to bring them in line with the single youth membership category we offer individual members. A large proportion of our child members of clubs (who currently pay £3.50 a year) are also climbers who compete in our youth climbing competitions and we feel that the new price more fairly reflects the resources that go into providing this service. 

We hope members can appreciate and understand these changes to membership pricing.

• If you have any questions, please get in touch with our membership team at membership@mountaineering.scot