Youth opportunity fund and play money hit by removal of ringfencing

The Department for Communities and Local Government announced which grants would no longer be ringfenced this morning.

As predicted in CYP Now this week, the government has removed the ringfence around the £40.8m allocated to the youth opportunity fund. The fund was established as part of the Youth Matters green paper in 2005 and has proved popular for giving young people the power to decide how hundreds of millions of pounds of government money should be spent on youth projects and facilities.

The remaining £75m of capital funding for play has also been freed up to allow local authorities to use it as they please. The money was part of £235m that had been dedicated to building and refurbishing 3,500 playgrounds across England as part of the previous government's Play Strategy.

Communities secretary Eric Pickles said: "The information that my department is today sending to every local authority provides the detail councils need to make the necessary decisions as quickly as possible on how they will deliver the necessary changes."

Other grants that are now vulnerable to being redirected include £94.1m for Think Family programmes, aimed at promoting better joint-working around families with complex needs, including the previous government's highly-lauded family intervention projects. In addition, the remaining £3.9m for Challenge and Support programmes is no longer ring fenced. The £13m Challenge and Support grant was created as part of the Youth Crime Action Plan to help local authorites create programmes of support for young people committing anti-social behaviour.

The ringfences have been removed after the government promised to free up £1.7bn in local authority grants to allow more local decision-making on how to deal with cuts.