Funding: Invisible budgets

Has the amount allocated by central government to local authority youth services in England risen this year? No-one knows. Why? The Government has stopped publishing the figures.

Back in 2002, the Government proudly announced its allocation of 513m to local authorities to spend on the youth service in the forthcoming financial year. That was an increase of 5.9 per cent, said Ivan Lewis, then youth service minister. He promised the yearly increase would continue.

So it did. A year later it had gone up to 539m. And in 2005-06 it rose to 570m. But this year the Department for Education and Skills is silent. It says the Government has taken a decision not to provide the separate budget line known as the youth and community sub-block. Phil Woolas, minister for local government, told the House of Commons last December that all such formula spending shares were being abolished - as notional spending figures were "misunderstood and misused". That ended the short-lived experiment of using central government's grant allocation to encourage low-spending local authorities to beef up spending on services to young people.