Joint working - Cripes! It's Boris's one-year verdict

When he was elected London mayor last May, Boris Johnson declared that youth crime was the "number one issue we face in this city".

Few disagreed. London had already seen 11 violent teenage deaths in the first four months of 2008.

Since then, the effervescent Johnson has ploughed £700,000 into crime awareness schemes in schools. Last November, he launched the Time for Action plan, focusing on mentoring schemes and rehabilitation of first-time offenders. More recently, in April, he announced an additional £23m to boost training and education for young offenders.

However, groups such as Mothers Against Murder and Aggression say the measures do little for the often young victims of crime (see right).

John Biggs, deputy chair of the London Assembly's Labour group, questions the sincerity of Johnson's commitment to improve young lives. He says: "During his election campaign he played on the fears of older Londoners, for example by attacking travel concessions for young people. I wouldn't trust him not to put the boot in on young people again if he sees any votes in it."

Mayor's Fund

Johnson's second stated priority was to tackle child poverty. Here, he has set up the Mayor's Fund, which aims to invest £20m a year in projects for disadvantaged young people by 2013.

But with the fund reliant on donations from big business, charity campaigners are concerned these goals may be too ambitious and that any money raised may not be new.

The past year has seen turmoil in the leadership on young people's issues. Ray Lewis, Johnson's initial appointment as deputy mayor for young people, was forced to resign after two months amid allegations of financial misconduct. It was only in January this year that Johnson appointed James Cleverly as ambassador for young people, a role that the Labour group has criticised as being a downgraded version of Lewis' position.

Report card: How experts rate Johnson's performance on children and young people's issues.

YOUTH CRIME - 3/10

"Time for Action is to be welcomed. Johnson also has a strong emphasis on tackling youth crime. There have been fewer incidents so far this year, but the weather is only just getting better and many gang members stay in when it's cold. We're also concerned there isn't much support for victim groups. We spoke briefly with him at a conference last year and he said he would meet us to speak in detail, but a year on that still hasn't happened."

- Lynn Costello, co-founder, Mothers Against Murder and Aggression

CHILD POVERTY - 5/10

"Johnson said addressing child poverty would be his second priority behind youth crime. Since then there has been a lot of talk but not much activity. Yes, he has set up the Mayor's Fund to put into projects to combat poverty and help children, but a lot of this money is reliant on the City and involves donations from foundations that would have been handed to charities anyway. This leaves a question mark as to whether this is new money."

- Liz Thorne, development, manager, End Child Poverty London

TRANSPORT - 4/10

"The mayor needs to work out how to encourage more children and young people to travel on foot and by bike. The overall number of cycle trips made by children and young people is actually falling, yet these are tomorrow's cyclists. To compound this negative trend, Johnson has decided to scrap the Congestion Charge Western Extension Zone. This will increase traffic levels and increase pollution in an area that already suffers from poor air quality and have a negative impact on the health of young people."

- Carl Pittam, London director, Sustrans

OLYMPICS - 9/10 - For overall olympics development

2/10 - For commitments to affordable family housing

"Commitments on pay and training for site workers have been struck, which is a positive. We are happy workers will get a living wage, which will help families, and the first apprentices are now being trained to work on site construction. But even though the legacy work does not start until 2013, we would like to have seen firm plans in place. Also, there is still no commitment for 50 per cent of housing on the site to be not only affordable, but for families."

- Neil Jameson, lead organiser, London Citizens

PLAY - 7.5/10

"Johnson favours delegation to boroughs, which is likely to lead to uneven progress. The previous administration had a play champion and a play strategy. This administration has no play initiatives on the horizon. Planning guidance, for added play space in all new developments of more than 10 units, is still in place. But there is little capacity to monitor this as almost all applications are only seen by boroughs. There have been no steps back, but not much progress either."

- Alan Sutton, development manager, London Play

CHILDCARE - 7/10

"There have been a number of changes at the London Development Agency since Johnson became mayor. We were pleased that the importance of continuing to support parents through the Childcare Affordability Programme was recognised by the mayor, with extra funding available so that parents who had used the scheme since 2005 were not affected by the ending of phase one."

Purnima Tanuku, chief executive, National Day Nurseries Association

OVERALL SCORE: 5.5/10 - nice try but must do better.