Dacorum Sub Aqua Club

Benefits of BSAC Membership

Numbers

The British Sub Aqua Club (BSAC) has 40,000 members, 1000 branches and 75 professional schools in Britain and 300 amateur branches and 85 schools overseas.

All members of DS-AC automatically become members of BSAC.

This page tells you what you receive in return for your BSAC membership.

Benefits

Here are some of the benefits of BSAC membership:

• you get free:
  • third party insurance
  • Dive magazine
• you become a member of the biggest diving club in the world.
• we use a modern training system created by BSAC with accompanying manuals and materials.
• BSAC qualifications are internationally recognised.
• We can train to become BSAC Nationally Qualified Instructors.
• we can take cheap training courses with the Regional Coaching Scheme. We are part of BSAC Eastern Region. The courses are generally excellent.
• our instructors can get experience with the Regional Coaching Scheme. There some good regional instructors to help our instructors.
• the BSAC Member's Web site has a lot of good stuff that is relevant to our methods and training.
• we can go on BSAC expeditions. They are normally advertised in the BSAC website.

Some balance

To add a little balance, it must be said that BSAC had some problems in a few years ago: 

• near bankruptcy due to a rogue accountant and a lax management style
• the very early resignation a recent Chairman
• unpopular changes to the training system - they have been reversed

An unexpected result of these difficulties is, that they have made BSAC much more interested in getting the support of the grass root members on the issues that face BSAC. So we find ourselves consulted and considered more than we used to be.

Communicating our views

We are able to communicate our views to BSAC in a number of ways:

• The BSAC web site has the contact e-mail addresses of most of BSAC's officers
• The BSAC web site has a number of forums which are monitored by BSAC decision makers
• We can provide feed back using the Regional Coaching Scheme - a network of instructors who help clubs in their areas. You can communicate with the BSAC Eastern Regional Coach using this e-mail address
• We can attend the Diving Officer's Conference each year to meet and speak to people

To sum up

With a cost as low as £40 per year and the sort of benefits listed above, BSAC membership is still money well spent. 

Also, BSAC's great strength is its amateur tradition of training, instructing and doing things for each other for the fun of it rather than for financial gain.