Council outlines major cuts to children's centres and youth services

Enfield Council said it plans to reduce its current five children’s centre hubs to one hub and a number of associated “spokes” by April 2019. It also wants to explore “third-party alternatives” for children's centre provision.

A document outlining the plans reveals that the authority will initially reduce the number of children’s centre hubs from five to two, reducing the budget for each of them over a two-year period.

That will be followed by a “major restructure” during 2018/19, with the aim of operating one central hub with a number of “spokes” across the authority by April 2019. In total, the council predicts these measures will result in savings of £1.7m.

Meanwhile, it plans to save a further £1.7m by 2017/18 through “a significant reduction" in all non-statutory youth service provision.

As part of this, the council will seek to find “substitute funding from charitable organisations" to maintain the borough’s five youth centres, and plans to rely on volunteers to provide a youth offer to local young people.

Services that will no longer be provided will include youth centre workers, detached youth work services, specialist provision for young people who are not in education, employment or training, and positive activities for young people during school holidays.

Further savings of £783,000 will come from “restructuring and reducing” the joint educational psychology and child and adolescent mental health service.

“The core offer will be renegotiated with schools and reduced to a statutory minimum,” the document states.

Other services facing cuts include the school improvement service (£452,000), the early years service (£577,000), transport for children with special educational needs (£500,000), the parenting capacity assessments service (£200,000) and short breaks for disabled children (£104,000).

In total, planned savings for children's services at the local authority add up to £24.3m by 2020. Enfield Council said it has to make savings of £50m across all of its services by 2020 on top of £118m in savings that have already been made since 2010.

A spokesman for Enfield Council said the authority is dealing with unprecedented financial challenges as a result of increased pressure on services and a reduction in funding from government.

“The council is doing everything it can to protect services, but the scale of the savings already made and those further required means that efficiencies are no longer enough and budget reductions are now affecting all services,” he said.

“While some services are statutory, such as child protection, youth justice and looked-after children, other discretionary services may be affected.

“Until the council gives full consideration to proposals for reductions we cannot say exactly what parts of the service will be retained and what will be cut.”

Councillors are due to vote on the proposed budget at a full council meeting on 24 February.