The Scout Association has earmarked more than £1m from its reserves to cover the costs of evacuating thousands of UK campers from an international gathering in South Korea.
Tens of thousands of teenagers at the World Scout Jamboree in the south-western county of Buan have been removed from the campsite because of issues including extreme heat, problems with sanitation and an incoming tropical storm.
The charity said 4,500 British scouts had been moved off the site and into hotels.
Funds to move affected campers will come out of The Scout Association’s reserves, which will affect its ability to fund work over the next few years, the charity said.
Matt Hyde, chief executive of UK Scouts, said the group had been “let down by the organisers” and said the huge camp had dirty toilets and was generally unhygienic.
About 2,500 participants have been treated for heat-related conditions since the jamboree started on Wednesday, including bug bites, skin rashes and heat exhaustion. There has also reportedly been an outbreak of Covid-19.
Hyde said the participants involved in the event, which takes place every four years in different locations around the world, would not be expected to pay any more towards the extra costs.
“We felt that it was not a safe environment to be in and we knew when we took that decision how difficult that was going to be for young people who have spent two years raising money and that’s why we feel so let down,” he said.
“We are ensuring that participants are not going to pay more. They have already fundraised enough. It will come out of our reserves.
“We had commitments to those reserves that will of course mean that we can’t now do things that we wanted to do over the next three to five years.”
As of 31 March 2022, the general free reserves for The Scout Association were £57.2m, excluding reserves for the pension fund deficit, its accounts show.
Each of the 4,500 English scouts who attended the event paid £3,500 to do so, many of them having fundraised for two years to afford the trip.
Organisers said that as tropical storm Khanun bears down on the camp, all of the remaining scouts there – about 40,000 people from 158 countries – would be evacuated, bringing the event to an end.
Khanun is expected to hit the country by Thursday morning, bringing winds of up to 95mph.
Third Sector asked The Scout Association for further detail on how much it had spent on the evacuation and what future activities would be affected, but the charity said it was unable to provide answers before publication of this article.