Poor transport, lack of facilities and the need for outreach work have always made rural youth services expensive. With forthcoming cuts to local authority budgets, those working in the sector fear youth work will be an easy target.
"People don't expect there to be issues for young people in rural areas so they're easy to cut," says Denise Sore, senior policy officer for the Commission for Rural Communities. "If a village is lucky enough to have a youth service, once that's cut and you haven't got transport, there's little more on offer."
Outreach cuts
Around 2.2 million children aged from birth to 19 live in England's rural communities. Of these, 39 per cent of secondary school pupils travel more than 4km to their nearest school, compared to 0.5 per cent for urban children, and the distances for accessing youth services are similar.
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