News from Siân Berry: Young Londoners suffer as millions more cut from youth services

The future of youth services in London looks increasingly bleak as updated figures from Sian Berry AM show at least £7.5 million will be cut this year from council budgets across London.



Figures from almost every council have now been sent back in response to Sian Berry’s request for information. The updated figures in her new report published today show: [1]

• Total youth service cuts across London between 2011/12 and 2016/17 are now more than £28 million – an average of 34 per cent
• Councils plan to remove at least another £7.5 million from youth services in their upcoming 2017/18 budgets
• At least 457 youth worker jobs have been lost since 2011 – a staffing cut of 48 per cent
• 36 youth centres have closed across the city

In a Green Group budget amendment for the GLA. Sian proposed that the Mayor should help mitigate these cuts with new funding to councils via the London Crime Prevention Fund, but her proposals were rejected by the Assembly and not taken up by the Mayor in his final budget in February. [2]

She has now repeated her call for the Mayor to act at a strategic, London-wide level to protect youth services in her response to the Mayor’s draft Police and Crime Plan. [3]

Sian Berry said:



“I was very disappointed that, in his final budget in February, the Mayor did not take up my proposal to help councils that have been forced to cut their services for young people.

“The risk to real crime prevention and the risk to the safety of young Londoners is clear and I believe the Mayor does have a duty to act on this at a London-wide level.

“I have been visiting communities and young people around London who are worried about the future of their services and witnessing first-hand how they are losing their youth workers and youth centres.

“The final Police and Crime Plan must set out how the Mayor will act to help young Londoners and mitigate the effects of these cuts.”