Key findings:

• Frequency of work with 11-17yr olds has shown the greatest decline since the last survey.
• 16% of leaders felt that the ethnic diversity of their participants had increased.
• 978 of our respondents had volunteered 29,125 times in the past year. This is an average of 30 days per candidate (up from 19 in the previous survey).

Mountain Training England has published its 2023 Impact Report. The report is the second one of its kind after the first was published in 2018. Both reports surveyed the whole adventure activity sector to determine Mountain Training England’s direct and indirect impact on activity. The 2023 report specifically looks at the effect of the Covid pandemic upon the sector, the nature of its recovery and the long term changes that it caused.

The report found that overall there had been a 20% increase in the number of people who wanted to gain a qualification since 2018, and that 35% of those who gained a leadership qualification were female. Since 1964 Mountain Training England has trained over 200,000 candidates who now lead over 2.4 million participants in climbing, hill walking and mountaineering each year.

The pandemic however saw a huge disruption to this activity with 2,000 fewer qualified leaders being created for the sector. This and the significant loss of local education authority and commercial outdoor centres has particularly led to a decline in youth adventure activity with Mountain Training qualified leaders.

You can read the summary report here: