Youth organisations have called on the new government to deliver fundamental changes to statutory guidance to help rejuvenate local authority youth provision.
The comments come in response to a public call for evidence on the effectiveness of statutory guidance for council youth services held in the autumn by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Office for Civil Society.
The eight-week consultation, which ended on 1 December 2019, asked respondents for views on their awareness and understanding of existing statutory guidance, and how effective they think it is in securing services for young people.
The government pledged to review the guidance, last updated in 2012, as part of its Civil Society Strategy published in August 2018. The current guidance places a duty on councils to provide sufficient services for young people “as far as is reasonably practicable”, but youth groups point to eight years of deep cuts to provision due to shrinking children’s services budgets as evidence that the requirements need to be tightened to make it clearer the level of provision expected.
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