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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many youth centres have closed in each year since 2015.

DCMS does not hold the data requested. Local Authorities have a statutory duty to ‘secure, so far as is reasonably practicable, sufficient provision of educational and recreational leisure-time activities for young people’. This is funded from the Local Government settlement, which is almost £60 billion this year (FY 23/24). DCMS has worked with the youth sector and local authorities to update the statutory guidance that underpins the duty to support local authorities in delivering it.