Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to improve access to youth activities for young people in Surrey Heath constituency.

This Government recently published ‘Youth Matters: Your National Youth Strategy’, a 10 year plan to ensure every young person across the country has somewhere to go, someone who cares for them and a community they feel part of. This is backed by over £500 million of new money over the next 3 years from DCMS. We will be designing the funding and programmes in more detail over the next few months and will share more information in due course.

Local Authorities have a statutory duty to secure, so far as is reasonably practicable, sufficient provision of youth services in their area. We will explore reviewing this duty as part of a wider review of local statutory duties.