New National Youth Strategy

Opening Doors to Great Futures

New National Youth Strategy

people taking a photo

On Tuesday 12th November Secretary of State for the DCMS, Lisa Nandy announced the government’s new Youth Strategy.

NABGC would like to issue the following response to the announcement.

Firstly, we must say that we are pleased that the government is taking the future of young people seriously and seeking to develop a strategy that addresses the needs of young people, the challenges they face and helping them to build a better future where they can thrive and fulfil their potential and goals. This is a really positive step from the new government! Our hope at Boys & Girls Clubs, is that it will be an ambitious strategy that all party’s can agree on and work towards regardless of which government occupies No10.

Second, we are pleased that young people will be at the heart of strategy development and decision making through the creation of a youth advisory board. Our hope, however, is that this announcement is not the beginning of an elongated period of review and consultation. Much has been done in recent years to discover what challenges young people face, what they need and want – now is the time for action and to deliver on what is needed for young people and the sector.

With regards to the announcement that the NCS will cease beyond next year, NABGC are not against this decision. NCS does seem to have lost its way recently, and we believe the funding would now be better invested elsewhere. We do hope, however, that any savings from the demise of NCS are reinvested in the wider youth sector IN ADDITION to the funding announcements made on Tuesday.

There were some funding announcements made by the Secretary of State, including funding towards capital investments for equipment and facility improvements, as well as £100 million from the dormant assets fund towards achieving youth outcomes “……supporting the provision of services, facilities and opportunities for young people across the country.” There was also an announcement that there would be a Local Youth Transformation pilot. We welcome the funding announcements but would like to see more detail before making any further judgements.

We are concerned though, that this funding will be directed towards and / or channelled through local authorities, something we would warn against and would argue that this is simply rebuilding an unsustainable model of youth service delivery and that there would be little to no benefit for the (authentic) voluntary sector that we support, and which has borne the burden of providing youth services as local authority provision has been decimated.

NABGC are the charity in the UK supporting local, grassroots, voluntary youth clubs. We support “authentic” voluntary youth clubs reaching around 300,000 young people with over 15,000 volunteers in 3,000 youth clubs. They have been the constant for young people in what has been a tumultuous two-decades of austerity, COVID and now post-pandemic society. At the recent launch of the consultation on the new “Civil Society Covenant”, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, supported by Lisa Nandy and Stephanie Peacock, stated that they wanted to reset the covenant relationship that the government has with Civil Society. What a great start to that reset it would be, by committing significant investment to the army of volunteers that have remained true to the most disadvantaged young people this last 20-years.