Government has halved the youth capital fund - which gives councilsmoney to fund new facilities developed in consultation with young people- to 13m half-way through the final year of the programme.
David Wright, chief executive of the Confederation of Heads of YoungPeople's Services, said many councils have already spent funds inadvance to ensure they met deadlines and no money went to waste.
"Councils have started schemes early in anticipation of the funding toensure they are complete on time," said Wright. "But now there is a riskthat youth services will foot the bill and will have to find money fromelsewhere when it is already scarce."
One head of youth service, who wished to remain anonymous, told CYP Nowhe will be asking for significant sums from the youth opportunity fund,which his council is already cutting, to cover the cost of projectsalready under way and avoid making redundancies.
"As a large local authority, we get quite a lot of youth capital fundingand, due to the bureaucracy involved, getting decent projects up andrunning within 12 months is impossible," he said.
"We allocated the rest of our funds at the end of the last financialyear to give everyone 18 months to plan and consult with youngpeople."
