Local authorities urge funds be shifted away from the former PM’s National Citizen Service to serve council projects

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Councils have urged ministers to shift funds from David Cameron’s residential youth scheme to their own year-round schemes after it emerged his project used 95% of all government spending on youth services despite reaching relatively few teenagers.

The Local Government Association said some of the £634m allocated to the National Citizen Service (NCS) over the past few years would make up for some of the cuts to council schemes. More than 600 youth centres had closed.

Financial doubts surface over Cameron’s ‘big society’ youth programme Read more

The NCS was one of Cameron’s early announcements as prime minister in 2010 – part of his “big society” policy. It offers three to four-week programmes where 15- to 17-year-olds work in teams on projects connected to skills and the community.

The scheme, which was allocated £1.5bn in funding overall, has faced criticism for lax spending controls and poor management.

Last month a parliamentary answer from Tracey Crouch, the culture minister, revealed the NCS had, in 2016 alone, spent almost £10m on places which were never filled.

Other questions from Labour to Crouch found that companies working with the NHS were permitted to make profits from the service, and that two local partners delivering the scheme had hit serious financial difficulties.

The Local Government Association said the most recent figures on take-up of the scheme showed that in 2016 just 12% of eligible young people, 93,000 in total, took part in the NCS. In some areas the take-up was as low as 4%.

Central government spending figures for youth services for the four years from 2014-15 to 2017-18 showed that in a total of just under £668m the NCS accounted for £634m, with other schemes accounting for a sum just below £34m.

Councils also provide youth services from their budgets, elements of which have been deemed obligatory. However, amid significant overall budget cuts, the amount councils have spent on these services has fallen from £650m in 2010-11 to £390m in 2016-17.

The Local Government Association, which represents 370 councils in England and Wales, said the NCS money would achieve more in council schemes, which were year round and not limited to a tight age range.

Anntoinette Bramble, a councillor in Hackney, east London, who chairs the association’s children and young people board, said: “Ministers must devolve a slice of the funding to councils so they can begin to scale back the cuts to council youth services and provide targeted support to a much wider group of young people locally all year round.”.

Labour vows to make provision of youth services compulsory Read more

This week Labour announced it would consult on a plan to make it compulsory for councils to provide a minimum level of youth services, providing ringfenced funding, as a way of trying to tackle knife crime and other social ills.

Cat Smith, the shadow Cabinet Office minister whose brief includes youth affairs, said: “NCS provides great opportunities for young people. However, a four-week programme is not enough to make up for the systematic removal of youth services across this country. At a time of devastating cuts, the government cannot justify exclusively funding NCS at the expense of other vital youth services.”

A spokeswoman for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said the NCS had “improved the lives of 400,000 young people in disadvantaged areas across the country”.

She said: “In addition, we are investing £80m of exchequer and lottery funding on projects for young people. This includes opening new youth clubs, improving mental health support services and encouraging young people to take part in volunteering.”

