Youth Services

1st reading
Wednesday 17th December 2025 Commons Chamber

Motion for leave to bring in a Bill (Standing Order No. 23)

17:37

[Natasha Irons (Croydon East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about the delivery of youth services by local authorities, including services under section 507B of the Education Act 1996; to require local authorities to specify groups of young people to receive particular services for the purposes of personal and social development of people in those groups; to make provision about the inclusion of youth services in arrangements for the inspection of children’s services and social care services; to make provision about targets for the delivery of youth work and measurement of delivery against those targets; to require local authorities to consult users and prospective users of youth services about the provision of those services; and for connected purposes.

As outlined in the Government’s national youth strategy, every young person deserves a safe place to go, a trusted adult to turn to, and the opportunity to develop skills, confidence and a sense of belonging. For generations, youth services have provided exactly that; they have offered support beyond the school gates, stability when home life is difficult, and early help long before problems escalate to crisis. Today, though, too many young people are growing up without access to those services.

The duty on councils to provide youth services already exists in law. Section 507B of the Education Act 1996 requires local authorities to secure sufficient leisure-time activities for young people. However, the law does not define what “sufficient” means. There are no clear expectations, no common standards, and no effective way to assess whether the duty is being met in practice. This lack of clarity has left youth services vulnerable when councils are forced to balance competing statutory pressures. As a result, funding for youth services has been cut by £1.2 billion since 2010.

Over the same period, the number of council-run youth centres has fallen by more than half. What remains is not only smaller in scale, but increasingly uneven in reach, with spending on youth services ranging from around £1 per young person in some areas to over £130 in others. That inconsistency is the predictable outcome of a statutory framework that is vague, weakly enforced and too easily sidelined.

That matters because youth services do not exist in isolation. When they are absent, pressures do not disappear, but simply resurface elsewhere. In England today, one in five children and young people have a probable mental health disorder. Incidents of youth violence remain at high levels, with 3,000 knife crime offences last year involving children. The Office for National Statistics reports that 16 to 24-year-olds are now the loneliest group in our society. Last year’s “Good Childhood Report” states that the UK’s children and young people are the unhappiest in Europe.

I have seen at first hand the impact that a lack of statutory protection and the defunding of youth services can have on a community. In Croydon, London’s youngest borough, we have lost our council-run youth engagement team. That team of youth workers provided a critical link between the council, the voluntary sector and vulnerable young people across the borough. The lack of statutory protection meant that this vital service was cut without proper consultation with key partners like the local police and the NHS, and without consulting widely with Croydon’s young people. Although Croydon’s voluntary sector is doing all it can to step up and step in where the council has stepped back, without sufficiency benchmarks there is little that our community can do to ensure that Croydon’s youth services are delivered consistently across the borough and in a way that reflects local need.

The purpose of the Bill is to address that structural weakness. It starts with a simple premise: if Parliament places a duty on local authorities, that duty should be meaningful and clear, and should hold local authorities to account. Youth services should not be left to chance and young people should not be left waiting for support that never comes. At present, statutory guidance sets out broad principles but avoids firm expectations. It does not define minimum levels of provision, workforce capacity or accessibility. Over time, this lack of clarity has hollowed out provision and widened regional disparities.

The Bill proposes benchmarks around three core areas. First, on workforce capacity, youth work is a skilled profession, built on relationships, trust and safeguarding, so the Bill sets expectations around access to qualified youth workers, recognising the importance of professional expertise alongside volunteers and community organisations. The expectations are not about imposing a one-size-fits-all model or micromanaging local delivery. They are about setting a clear national floor below which provision should not fall, while leaving local authorities free to design services that reflect local need.

Secondly, the Bill proposes targets and benchmarks for delivery, which could include a per head funding model, the distance that young people must travel to access services, or ensuring that there are enough safe spaces for young people in each area. The benchmarks would bring transparency and comparability to spending decisions, and make it easier for councillors, inspectors and local residents to see whether youth services are being properly resourced. Without a clear sense of what adequate investment looks like, youth services will always struggle to compete with other statutory responsibilities.

Thirdly, the Bill proposes ensuring that young people are consulted, so that services reflect local need and young people’s priorities. Youth services work best when young people help to shape them, and the Bill seeks to embed consultation, participation and the democratic involvement of young people in the design of their services. The good news is that this has been done before. In the early 2000s, national guidance set out clear expectations on leadership, workforce and inspection. Those arrangements have since fallen away, but they demonstrate that it is possible and appropriate for the Government to define what sufficiency looks like.

The Bill also recognises the reality of modern delivery. Local authorities increasingly work in partnership with voluntary and community organisations. That partnership working will be made stronger if it is underpinned by co-ordination, data and accountability. By strengthening reporting requirements and linking youth services into existing inspection and outcome frameworks, the Bill aims to support improvement rather than impose punishment.

The aim of the Bill is to make youth services a core part of the local safety net, not an optional extra that disappears when finances are tight. That is important because youth services sit at the point where opportunity meets prevention.

About 85% of a young person’s waking hours are spent outside the classroom. What happens during that time shapes their wellbeing, their confidence and their future. The evidence is clear: investment in youth services pays off. Research by UK Youth and Frontier Economics shows that every £1 invested in youth work delivers between £3.20 and £6.40 in social value, through improved wellbeing, reduced crime and better long-term outcomes. This is not just a moral investment in our nation’s future; it is a practical one too.

In that context, we must wholeheartedly welcome the Government’s national youth strategy, the political focus that it gives our young people and the extra £500 million of investment that comes with it. The strategy rightly recognises the importance of youth work, and the need to look again at the statutory framework that underpins it. However, a commitment to explore and review, although important, does not in itself restore provision on the ground. Young people who are growing up today cannot wait years for clarity to emerge.

This Bill takes the Government’s stated ambitions and gives them the practical effect that is needed. It replaces ambiguity with clarity, aspiration with benchmarks, and guidance with accountability. It strengthens an existing duty rather than creating a new one, and it builds on mechanisms that are already in place. This is not about dictating a single model of provision; it is about setting a fair and transparent baseline so that no young person is left without support simply because of where they live; it is about giving local authorities the framework they need to prioritise youth services and to work effectively with voluntary and community partners; and it is about ending the often patchwork postcode lottery of provision that young people currently face.

The Youth Services Bill offers a practical and proportionate way to achieve that. It strengthens the statutory duty, provides clarity where there is currently confusion, and helps to ensure that youth services are treated as a core part of our commitment to the next generation. For those reasons, I commend it to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Natasha Irons, Dr Lauren Sullivan, Josh Dean, Jim Dickson, Shockat Adam, Vikki Slade, Mrs Sharon Hodgson, Abtisam Mohamed, Gareth Snell, Afzal Khan, Rachael Maskell and Kim Johnson present the Bill.

Natasha Irons accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 16 January 2026, and to be printed (Bill 353).