NO: Doug Nicholls, general secretary, Community and Youth Workers' Union
There is no such thing as a local youth service. Young people should have the same rights, entitlements and levels of service throughout the country.
The wildly varying local budgets that continue to plague provision for young people are an expression not of local discretion and democracy, but indiscretion and represent a postcode lottery for young people. Local authorities in England are the custodians of the targets of Transforming Youth Work and in Wales of Extending Entitlement. They have no right to depart from the spending levels.
Principal youth officers who say that Resourcing Excellent Youth Services represents pie-in-the-sky aspirations, or as one recently said to me "cloud-cuckoo-land", enjoy a local flexibility that has always driven young people's services downwards. If any local authorities think that the Government's further loosening of budget streams will enable them to further neglect the youth service, then the next Labour manifesto might encourage them to think again.
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