Minister promises decision on YOT funding before Christmas

Speaking at the Youth Justice Board's annual convention in Bournemouth last week, Hanson said he could not confirm whether funding had been secured but said he had discussed the money with Justice Secretary Jack Straw.

"I believe we can resolve that issue in a positive way and I urge organisations looking at the pressures to hold off until we can resolve it," he said. "Hopefully it will be done before Christmas."

Hanson's comments came after he was quizzed by Mike Thomas, chair of the Association of YOT managers (AYM), who said prevention projects were beginning to lose staff because of uncertainty about whether funding would continue after March 2008.

Children's Secretary Ed Balls was also pressed on the issue at the conference. He said prevention work was essential and the government was committed to carrying on the work that YOTs are doing.

"We want to go further and be more ambitious with prevention in years to come," Balls said. "We will all be working to make sure we don't lose skilled staff and we've been speaking to Jack Straw. We want to get it sorted as early as possible so we can say funding is in place for you to do what you're doing."

Thomas said: "A number of projects with extremely good people are laying staff off. Up to 1,200 members of YOTs face being laid off because we still don't know whether our prevention projects will continue to receive funding."

The AYM wrote to ministers in September about concerns that 1,200 staff working on youth crime prevention projects could lose their jobs if an announcement over funding was not made soon (CYP Now, 12-18 September).

According to research carried out by the AYM, there are 35,000 young people at risk of offending involved in prevention programmes across England and Wales.