Protest at cuts to youth services

Brighton and Hove City Council is looking at proposals to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from the budget, with the money currently spent on a contract with a consortium of charities and community groups.

The voluntary sector groups use the council money as base funding or core funding enabling them to bid for extra cash from other organisations.

The campaigners staged the protest outside Hove Town Hall before the council’s Children, Young People and Skills Committee, during which they also posed questions to councillors.

Jack Stanford said: “Youth clubs provide a safe community space for young people. For many youngsters it is the only place in their area they can go without risk of being harmed mentally or physically.

“If youth clubs are closed then where can young people go to benefit from and socialise in a safe open access environment?”

Another Boudicca Pepper, asked how the proposed cuts tallied with Labour’s local manifesto pledge to eliminate youth unemployment by 2020, while also highlighting the financial benefits to the council of the preventive work carried out by the youth service.

Councillor Tom Bewick, Labour chair of the committee, replied: “We’re challenged with setting a legal budget. We’ve got to balance the books. Unfortunately that’s resulted in a proposal to cut some of the youth service money.”

He said that the council was still looking for savings totalling about £2 million.

He added: “It’s really regrettable that we’re making this cut to the voluntary sector. As a council we’ve got to make some tough decisions.”

Councillor Bewick told Mr Stanford: “You’re absolutely right about the role that youth clubs play. There will still be youth clubs. The council is not the only funder. We’re proposing to cut some non-statutory voluntary youth work.”

He said that the council would still be supporting the most vulnerable and listed service such as the youth offending service and the youth employability service which would continue to spend a seven-figure sum between them on helping young people.

He continued: “We’ve continued to invest in early years and we have no plans to cut our investment in early years. Long-term youth unemployment locally has been down consistently in the past few years. Apprenticeships are up by 20 per cent in the past few years. There are no proposals to cut the youth employability service.”

In reply to a question from community campaigner Mitch Alexander, who urged the council’s Labour administration to stand up to the Conservative government, Councillor Bewick said: “There is not a single one of my colleagues who gets out of bed and thinks: ‘What can we cut now?’

“As someone who first came to the city as a foster child, I can tell you it pains me that as an administration we’re faced with making these cuts.

“We have to prioritise and pass a legal budget. This isn’t about the Labour administration somehow taking some pleasure in making government cuts. We’ll do our utmost to support the most vulnerable people in this city.”