London youth services funding cut by £240m since 2011 riots, Sian Berry warns
Fiona Simpson
Thursday, August 5, 2021
London’s youth services have lost out on £240m in funding since the 2011 riots due to council budget cuts, a new report reveals.
London’s youth service cuts 2011-2021: a blighted generation, by Green Party London Assembly member Sian Berry finds that youth service funding across London as a whole has been cut by 44 per cent in the last decade.
“The average council budget for youth services in 2011/12 was £2.6m, and this fell to just £1.1m by 2020/21. If all councils had been able to maintain budgets at 2011/12 levels, Londoners would have seen at least £242m more invested in support for young people over the past 10 years,” the report states.
Staffing and resources have been badly hit by cuts with data showing that more than 600 full-time youth worker jobs have been lost across the capital, reducing the average provision per borough from 48 youth workers to just 15.
The report also identifies a loss of more than 130 youth centres, from a starting point of nearly 300, across London.
Sutton Council, in south London, closed its last universal youth centre this year, adopting a “referral only” youth work method, Berry says, adding that it now joins Waltham Forest in having no accessible youth centres for all young people.
Sutton cut its youth services budget by more than £1.2m in 2021/22, the report shows, the second highest spending cut of 17 out of 32 boroughs which submitted data for the report.
Tower Hamlets saw the biggest hit, slashing just over £1.5m from its youth services budget.
Camden was the only council to announce an increase in youth services funding, with a boost of £45,754.
Seven boroughs kept their budgets the same as in previous years while the other nine, including Sutton and Tower Hamlets, cut spending on youth provision totalling around £3.4m on top of the £240m cuts over the last decade.
Berry has also raised concerns over a lack of provision for girls and young women, noting that 10 boroughs have no female-specific youth services.
Of 26 councils that replied to requests for information on female-specific services, 40 programmes were identified across the capital, the report shows.
Berry is calling for ring-fenced funding for services supporting girls and young women.
She said: “The shock of devastating riots on the streets of London in the summer of 2011 should have cemented with urgency, the need for proper investment in young people.
“Instead, austerity policies got worse, squeezing council budgets even harder and my report highlights how we’ve lost vital youth centres and workers as a result.
“The young people who first pushed me into this work are adults now, and those who were in their late teens in 2011 are nearing their thirties. A whole generation of young people have been let down.
“As we slowly emerge from the pandemic, we must not forget that London’s young people are still bearing long-term losses in education, social lives, work and training opportunities.”
Berry, who began reviewing London’s youth services in 2016, added: “I hope that the mayor and Government recognise the awful situation facing youth services and the highly damaging legacy of austerity.
“It is vital that they step in with all the recovery funding they can find to reverse these cuts and restore services.”
