A husband and wife team have just taken on two of the top Scouting jobs in Bedfordshire. Ken Brooker, 58 has accepted the post of Assistant County Commissioner for Scouts in the county while his wife Jan, 56 is now the new District Commissioner for Biggleswade.

The pair have decades of Scouting experience behind them. Jan started as an Assistant Cub Scout Leader in Crawley in 1970 before moving to Bedfordshire and similar posts first in Barton and then Henlow. For some years she was Group Scout Leader of the Henlow/Clifton Scout Group.

Ken’s Scouting career started at the age of eight as a Cub Scout in Lympne where he remembers walking over three miles to meetings. Two years later he joined the Sea Scouts at Hythe so that he wouldn’t have to walk so far. In 1984 he moved to Henlow and took on the role of Scout Leader at the Henlow/Clifton Scout Group alongside Jan.

Jan reckons her daytime job as a personal assistant to the managing director of a St Neots company has given her all the people skills and administration experience she needs for her new role. She says, “I want to promote the benefits of Scouting to the people of Biggleswade, Sandy, Henlow and the other villages in the area. We need more leaders and more Scouts. I am also keen to develop the district camp site at Boyds Field in Henlow. It’s a little gold mine but we can do more.”

As an airline project manager, Ken flies all over the world. It’s a job that involves all the management skills he now needs for his new role. Ken says, “I’m keen to hear what the county’s Scout Leaders want but I want to encourage more international camps and to get the county Scouts out into the open air. Perhaps we can restart the county camping competition. With a new adventure-loving Chief Scout in charge, I see an exciting time ahead for Bedfordshire Scouts.”

And when all this activity gets too much for them? Well, they disappear for a few days to their narrow boat moored on the Grand Union Canal near Oxford. “It’s so peaceful,” says Jan. Then she adds with a chuckle, “That is until a boatload of Cub Scouts sail past.”

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