I think there are a few inaccuracies in your article. Currently I hold an AALA licence. It costs me £715 for a 2 year licence, so the actual costs are£357.50 per annum, very reasonable considering the amount of professional advice and support available from the inspectors. The majority of AALA licence holders are actually granted 2 year licences with only a few larger businesses having to renew their licence every year. You say that the new Adventuremark scheme will be "a considerably cheaper but well respected standard". But the truth is that it will take many years before Adventuremark is as well recognised as AALA and it is far more expensive for instructors. Their fees for providers applying directly are £750+ VAT for the first year of a 2 year licence, then £150+VAT in year 2. Additionally as I work with schools I may also need a licence from Learning Outside the Classroom which we can add to our Adventuremark licence for £400+VAT for year 1 of a 2 year licence with an additional £150+VAT in year 2. This totals £1740, a significant increase in cost compared to £715. Particularly for small businesses who may not be VAT registered. Getting rid of AALA is a clearly a cost cutting exercise by the government. Without a statutory licensing body there is bound to be confusion in the industry - if those of us who work in the outdoors are struggling to work out what is going on then how on earth are our clients meant to know what various logos means and what standards they should be looking for. But times are tough and £1.24million sounds like quite a saving for the government - but this isn't actually the correct. The cost to the tax payer of running AALA each year is actually less than 400,000 further more AALA have put forward a proposal for a new inspection regime which would meant that they could become entirely self funding - without increasing the licence fee. So if AALA can become cost neutral whilst offering a cheaper alternative to providers than Adventure mark or other inspection schemes then I cannot understand why we would want scrap statutory licensing and change to a wishy washy voluntary code of practice. In an recent article in Grough Mag, MCoS said they expected Scotland to follow Wales in maintaining AALA at least in the short term. Instead of attacking Wales and Scotland for their decisions perhaps England should take another look at it's decision and opt to keep AALA in place too. As you rightly state "since the AALA was established there have only been two fatal accidents involving providers requiring a license." This to me says that AALA is clearly doing an excellent job. Arguments about the scope of activities covered by AALA should surely lead us to review this rather than to scrap licensing all together. One thing is certain - scrapping statutory licensing is not going to make activities safer for young people, and the confusion is very likely to damage our industry.