News

03/04/2024 Make your voice heard regarding the closure of the NHS Recompression Chamber at Dunstaffnage, near Oban.

The closure of this chamber means that decompression incidents on the West Coast will now need helicopter (or Ambulance) transport to Aberdeen increasing delay and risk to affected divers. You can express your views directly to your MSP or MP and by signing the online petition https://www.change.org/p/prevent-the-closure-of-the-nhs-recompression-chamber-at-dunstaffnage-near-oban

29/03/2024 Easter Holidays - HQ closed.

Please note that the office is closed from 29Mar - 10Apr for the Easter Holidays. If you have an urgent query during that time, please contact the relevant member of the Board. Thanks.

25/03/2024 Upcoming Courses

After the successful delivery of courses in Feb/Mar, plans are being progressed for further courses, but we can already confirm the following:

Branch Instructor – 20th April 2024
Deep Dive – 11th / 12th May 2024
Nitrox – 25th May 2024

Courses are only run where there is sufficient interest so…

Please register your interest on JustGo by adding your name to the Waitlist (in JustGo – Click on Events and Courses>>Click on the relevant course>>Click on Add to Waitlist. Note: Club Admins can also do this for members of their Branch).

If you have any questions, please do contact the relevant Course Director and if you have any problems adding yourself to the Waitlist, please contact HQ. Thanks.

19/03/2024 Keep our Pools Open

Scottish Swimming have a petition in the Scottish Parliament at the moment to keep swimming pools open as they are so vital not just for swimmers but for other sports such as our own who use them for techniques, training and safety.

This petition is being considered in Parliament on Wednesday 20^th March and it will be great to get as many signatures on it ahead of this.

The petition link is here. Recognise the value of swimming pools and provide financial relief to help keep pools open - Petitions (parliament.scot)

13/02/2024 Update on upcoming training courses

The significant work to ensure courses are running to meet demand is bearing results with following courses taking place in Feb/Mar:

Thursday 15th Feb – CWPS (Child Wellbeing and Protection in Sport)
Sunday 25th Feb – Club Examiner Course
Sunday 10th Mar – First Aid/Heartstart/Oxygen Administration Course
Saturday 16th Mar – ScotSAC Nitrox Course
Saturday 16th Mar / Sunday 17th Mar – Regional Instructor Course

Thank-you to all those involved in arranging and delivering these courses.

9/01/2024

We hope the Christmas and New Year period was good to you and you are all ready to try out any shiny new kit Santa brought!

Membership Fees:

Please note that the updated membership fees as agreed at our AGM are now in operation and you can refer to them in the table on the Join Now page.

Training Courses:

There is significant activity in progress getting courses scheduled to meet demand. The current plans are as follows:

HeartStart / O2. Next course is 14^th January 2024. Course is now full, but planning is underway for the next course (potentially mid February) – please register your interest on JustGo
Deep Diving. Next course 13^th / 14^th January 2024. Course is now full, but planning is underway for the next course – please register your interest on JustGo
CWPS course (essential if you instruct in a branch that has juniors). Next date 15^th February 2024 (Virtual). Spaces available – please register your interest on JustGo. Branch CPOs will be given priority, however future courses will be scheduled to accommodate demand.
Nitrox. Next Course 16^th March 2024 in HQ. Spaces available – please register on JustGo if you want to attend.
Regional Instructor. Date TBC but targeting mid/late March 2024. The course is now full, but please speak to your Regional Coach if you want to take your instructing contribution to this level.
Branch Instructor. Next course TBC but targeting April – Spaces available. Please speak to your BDO and/or Regional Coach if you want to progress to become an instructor in your branch. You can then register your interest by joining the waitlist.

Note that in JustGo, when the course you wish to attend is full, you still have the option to join the waitlist for the course – that gets you into the queue for the next one or onto the scheduled one should a space become available. If you have any problems registering onto the waitlist, please contact HQ.

8/12/2023

Christmas/New Year: Please note that the ScotSAC office will be closed from 22Dec to 7Jan inclusive. Urgent items can be addressed to the Chair or to the NDO by email as appropriate.

7/12/2023

Reminder: Please be aware that there is only one postal collection per week from Caledonia House (on a Wednesday), so please allow for that when expecting qualification logbooks for new members of your branch. Once Kirsty has the logbook packaged up, it can take up to a week for it to actually leave the building.

1/12/2023

Scottish Sub Aqua Club
Please note that our office at Caledonia House | 1 Redheughs Rigg | South Gyle Edinburgh | EH12 9DQ is open:

Monday and Thursday on 0131 625 4404

Also available by phone only on Tuesday on 07543 673 616

Email: hq@scotsac.com | Website: www.scotsac.com | Membership login: scotsac.justgo.com

18/7/2022

New Admin and Finance Officer

After much searching we are delighted to welcome Kirsty Carella as our new Admin Officer. Kirsty comes to us with lengthy experience in administrative roles in various settings.

She started work with us on 18th July 2022.

She will be working 21 hours per week, her working days are Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

New ScotSAC Admin & Finance Officer

25/04/2017

We are delighted to welcome Helen Aitken as the new Administration & Finance Officer with ScotSAC.

Helen comes to us from a background of office and financial management which will hopefully mean that she will get to grips with ScotSAC’s policies and procedures fairly quickly. She is going to spend a little bit of time with Kate before she starts, but please allow her some time to settle in and find her way around.

Her starting date is 22nd May and she will be working 30 hours per week over 5 days. Expect the answering machine to be on outwith the hours of 10.00.a.m. and 12.md and 13.00 – 15.00. Please also bear in mind that when she works late to cover NDC and Board meetings, she needs to take time back.

I hope you will give Helen a warm welcome.

Edna Ewan
ScotSAC Chair

Kate is Leaving

10/04/2017

After seven and a half years in post as Admin & Finance Officer and Operations Manager since October 2013, Kate has decided that it is time to move on to other challenges.

In addition to the daily tasks of membership processing, book keeping and all the other tasks which support the Board, the NDC and the members, Kate has been instrumental in many of the innovations in ScotSAC including our branding – the letter heads, standardising the logo and more recently the infographics, giving you information about where your branch sits in the organisation and how we are doing on training and recruiting members.

Kate will be very sorely missed, but we wish her well in her new challenges and hope that her experience with ScotSAC will prove useful to her in the future.

ScotSail Dive Competition 2017

03/03/2017

As the March/April issue of Scottish Diver magazine will have landed through your letterboxes by now, many of you will have seen that ScotSail are running a competition where you could win three places (normally £199pp) on its Dive Specific RYA PowerBoat Level 2 (Coastal/Tidal) Course!

Full details of the competition are on the ScotSail website, with the winning entry being drawn at random on Monday 10th April 2017 and the winner notified by e-mail. The winner can choose who will attend the course.

Wishing all of our Members a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

16/12/2016

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of our Regional Coaches, Instructors, Branch Committees, and Volunteers for all of your hard work and dedication to the sport over the last year. None of our achievements as an organisation, or as individual branches would be possible without you. Whether it be taking a nervous new diver in for their first experience of the underwater world, keeping branch operations running smoothly, or running or helping out at a national course or event, we couldn't do it without you. Thanks!

ScotSAC HQ will be closed from Monday 19th December 2016 through until 5th January 2017.

Child Protection

07/12/2016

In light of recent media attention, we are aware that branches may have increased anxiety about child protection. If this is the case, you can contact ScotSAC's CPLO (Kate Jenkins: 0131 625 4404/childprotection@scotsac.com) or Safeguarding in Sport at 0141 419 1156 for advice, guidance and help.

Our advice to branches with junior members would be to ensure that you have:

A named contact for the co-ordination of child protection, with a role description, who has attended recommended training.
A Child Protection Policy which reflects national guidelines, adopted by the Board / Executive / Management Committee.
A Code of Conduct for working with children and young people.
A variety of child protection training offered at appropriate levels for those working or volunteering with children and young people in sport.
A procedure for the recruitment and selection of those who work with children and young people, including access to PVG Scheme Membership checks.
A procedure for responding to concerns about the welfare or abuse of a child - within or out with sport.
A disciplinary procedure for managing concerns and allegations of poor practice, misconduct and child abuse and includes provision for referrals to the Children’s List.
A procedure for reviewing the management of concerns about poor practice, misconduct and / or child abuse.

If somebody raises child protection concerns in relation to an Instructor/volunteer who is currently practising then you should follow your ‘Responding to Concerns’ procedure. If it is a historical allegation then you should follow the same procedure and signpost the individual to Police Scotland on ‘101’. If you have a concern about a child’s immediate safety then this should be passed on to Police or Social Work. All of our Child Protection documents can be found on our website here.

We will shortly be running another Safeguarding and Protecting Children workshop early next year. Attendance at a Safeguarding and Protecting workshop is mandatory for all Group 2 Instructors, BDOs and CPOs, and highly recommended for Group 3 Instructors, BDOs, and CPOs. Further details will be sent out in due course.