Failing Youth: 'London's lost youth service' special report by Sian Berry, Green AM

From Sian Berry, Green Party Assembly Member for London

My new report shows councils have had to cut more than a third of their youth services since 2011, and will have to make more cuts next year unless the Mayor steps in.

The report – London’s lost youth services – shows that London council youth services have lost a third of staff and £22 million in funding cuts since 2011.

Government cuts have hit all London councils hard, and youth services have been put on the chopping block across our city as a result. My findings include that the average council has cut youth service funding by nearly £1 million since 2011, and that plans are in place to reduce 2017/18 budgets by another 25 per cent on average.

The impact of these cuts could be devastating. Good quality youth services help young people develop skills, be creative and live positive social lives, and make them less vulnerable to falling into crime or the exploitation of groups like gangs.

The Mayor does fund some youth initiatives through policing budgets, but these are mainly targeted at knife and gang crime, and many of them also depend on the general youth services that are seeing the deepest cuts being available once young people decide to make changes to their lives.

This Wednesday at Mayor’s Question Time, I’ll be asking the Mayor what he can do to help. He has a fund worth £18 million a year that puts £3 million into services for young people – the London Crime Prevention Fund – but it needs expanding. It was started in 2013 and recently renewed by the Mayor for four years, but only at the same level of funding as under Boris Johnson.

Saving youth centres and youth workers would genuinely help to improve young people’s lives in London and would also help achieve Sadiq Khan’s goal of real crime prevention.

My report , ‘London’s lost youth services’, is based on a freedom of information request to borough councils. It reveals that youth services, which are non-statutory and not protected from austerity cuts, have been cut back dramatically in the past five years.

Between 2011/12 and 2016/17:

• Across London more than £22 million was cut from youth services budgets.
• The average council in London has cut its youth service budget by nearly £1 million – an average of 36 per cent.
• More than 30 youth centres have been closed.
• At least 12,700 places for young people have been lost.
• Council youth service employment has been reduced on average by 39 per cent – from 738 full-time equivalent staff across 20 councils to 452 in 2016/17.
• Funding to voluntary sector youth work has also gone down – by an average of 35 per cent in councils that were able to provide data.

Vote Green on the orange ballot paper to increase Green representation on the GLA

6 days to go! May 5th isn't just about the Mayor. Here's an amusing video about voting Green on the orange paper..https://t.co/PHUBmEr5ld

— Sian Berry (@sianberry) April 29, 2016

London Citizen's Assembly in Willesden on Wednesday

Navin Shah: Home Office 'Propaganda' vans will cause harm and raise tension

The Labour London Assembly Member for Brent and Harrow  condemned the 'racist van' campaign by the Home Office in Brent and five other London boroughs.

He said: 

I know that immigration in the UK needs to be tackled, but I am shocked to see plans to drive vans around Brent and five other boroughs in London. This will have a detrimental impact on the hugely diverse and harmonious community in Brent. The problem of illegal immigration has to be tackled properly and a campaign like this will only divide and discriminate communities.

We have worked very hard to have a borough which is an outstanding example of a multi-cultural community and this discriminatory propaganda by the Home Office will cause serious harm and raise tension in the community.

Darren Johnson challenges Boris Johnson's free school plans

From EdExec:

In a speech to the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham today, Boris Johnson promised to help boost the number of free schools in London by launching a group, known as ‘Schools for London’.

Johnson described himself as being a “passionate supporter” of free schools in his speech and praised them for their traditional teaching methods.

Rachel Wolf, founder of the New Schools Network, said: “With nearly 200 schools now open or approved to open, the free schools movement has accelerated at a pace that means the centralised processes around finding sites can’t cope. London is particularly problematic, and a number of schools were unable to open or faced delays because of the challenges in finding sites for new schools. 

“We are delighted that the Mayor will be helping free schools across the capital find sites and look forward to working with the GLA to ease this bottleneck and secure more great schools for London’s parents.”

Johnson said that Schools for London would be aimed at promoting free schools and he will be looking at opening up the police and fire service property portfolios to house the new schools.

Darren Johnson, a London assembly Green Party member believes that the Mayor should be working with local authorities to build new LA run schools rather than “throwing money at free schools in a wasteful fashion.” He said: “Transparency and value for money are vital. I will be asking the Mayor to justify his enthusiasm for free schools by removing the veil of secrecy which has been drawn over the financing of the policy."

He added that free schools aren’t enough to tackle the shortage of school places in the capital: “Free schools tend to be quite small and this means they are unlikely to meet the huge demand across London for school places in the coming years. There is no planning with these schools, so they don’t always open in the areas with the biggest demand for school places.”

Whitehall figures estimate a shortage of 78,923 primary school places and 12,227 secondary school places across the capital between now and 2014/15.

The nightmare gets worse. As if it is not enough for London schools to have to cope with Michael Gove we now have  Boris Johnson butting in. Help!