YJB chief pledges to save YOTs from worst of future cuts

Lin Hinnigan said the YJB had been asked to contribute savings of £20m towards overall departmental cuts being made at the Ministry of Justice.

Speaking at the annual Youth Justice Convention in Telford, Hinnigan said that although she cannot confirm YOT budgets for some time she is "hopeful we are going to be able to protect the YOT grant from significant cuts".

She said the continuing fall in the number of young people in custody – there are currently around 1,050 under-18s in custody – means there is "spare capacity" in the secure estate.

She said the recent announcement from the YJB to withdraw from Hindley YOI and to close Hassockfield STC was made to create the necessary savings for 2015.

"That wasn't an easy decision," she said. "Reducing the number of establishments we have in the secure estate leads to greater distances from home and impact on family contact and resettlement.

"It also creates a more compressed concentration of young people with challenging behaviour. It does create problems."

Hinnigan said that although there are "undoubtedly" risks associated with "compressing" the population of YOIs, "the risks of really large cuts to the YOT grant were ultimately greater, if less immediate".

"That's why we took the decision to find the savings from that spare capacity in the secure estate," she said.

Hinnigan also called on YOTs to co-operate with a planned review of how they work, announced yesterday by youth justice minister Andrew Selous.

"I think we have a challenge in terms of being limited in the hard evidence we are able to produce about exactly what it is that YOTs do that does deliver the results we see," Hinnigan said.

"It's quite hard to tease out exactly what you do in YOTs that has made the difference, and which bits you can take away without impact.

"Part of that is because this is a local solution, and local solutions that have evolved to meet a local context.

"That is why the MoJ has commissioned the work – to better understand how local services are funded and delivered."

Hinnigan pointed to the fact that statutory case work for YOTs has fallen by 42 per cent since 2010, saying a simplistic interpretation would be that because YOTs are dealing with far fewer people, they could cut their budgets by a "very significant amount".

"We need to be able to argue against that simplistic view of YOTs and for continued investment from both local and central government," she said.

"We have got to support the gathering of evidence to help us make that argument."