Cancellation Places for Shooting

Hi Rob, this is a really good question as I can answer a couple of things. First of all bookings open 2 weeks early so at midnight on Wednesday the previous session disappears and the new one (in 2 weeks time) opens. It does fill up over the course of the first week that its open.. but we also often get a lot of last minute cancellations - check here in the forum (on a Wed) to see if anyone can't make it. If you do see an opening via the forum and agree to take their spot you just pay in cash at the session and tell the instructor who you are 'being' for the evening. They can then claim their refund from us. Sometimes people will also post on facebook.. and sometimes we'll have enough notice to re-open a place to buy through the website as usual.

In terms of extra weeknight sessions unfortunately it's really difficult to 1) find an empty venue and 2) get enough people to sign up to make it viable.

Even though it looks like we have tons of members clawing for spaces.. we can't run a viable session without beginners at the current £10/session. We used to have a Friday night session but we struggled to fill 3x beginners courses.. and without beginners it gets really tough. It costs us a bit over £150 to put on a session (rent and instructor) on top of this we have to buy paper target faces and pay to repair and maintain equipment - for example our foam bosses in the sports hall cost £300 each (OUCH). If we get 20 people in at £10 each that gives us £166 after VAT. This just about covers the session but probably doesn't cover the cost of web maintenance and office staff etc to answer queries. So, we need 20+ people to sign up. On a Friday night on the roof pitch we have places for 28 people on a full, packed double detail.. we used to actually get 9-15 max. So, unfortunately we had to close the session. Southwark Academy is bigger (so we could fit more people if they wanted to come) but more expensive to hire.. we are on a list to see if we can secure an extra evening but as we're dependent on filling beginners courses (who as you know pay the equivalent of £25/30 for each lesson) it's unlikely that we'd be able to expand to another weeknight.

We did have a few people on our last consultation who said they'd be ok with a price rise.. but there are also a lot of people who might struggle to pay more.

That's a very useful and comprehensive answer and makes sense - I didn't really think about the costs. Thanks also for the tip about it being 2 weeks and to check the forums for last minute cancellations.