UK Metal Detector User Numbers up 10%

In the UK, the National Council for Metal Detecting's annual financial report (by Treasurer Siobhan Liehne) has recorded a 10% increase in membership in 2020 to 2021, their membership (including those in Clubs and Regions) at end of the financial year stood at 22929 individuals. members. This means that if Hardy's 2017 estimate that there were then 27000 artefact hunters in England and Wales, (going on 2020 figures) as many as 6000 of them did not belong to the NCMD. More to the point, if the overall number in one group has gone up by 10%, we may suspect that they will have gone up in both. This suggests that Hardy's estimate may be suspected to correspond with a figure closer to 30 000 individuals - in the same year that marks a round 25 years of PAS outreach to them. Yet the PAS has not expanded 10% in the same period, indeed, it has effectively contracted with the end of the PASt Explorers programme.