Youth work ‘black holes’ in half of all council areas in England, study finds

Almost half of all council areas in England have youth work “black holes” with few or no services despite high levels of deprivation and antisocial behaviour, analysis shows.The first mapping in decades of youth centres across the country has revealed a nationwide crisis in youth support and significant inequality. Poorer areas in the north of England are shown to have been the worst affected by cuts to youth services since 2010.The research, produced by the charity funder Social Investment Business (SIB) and the University of Leeds, plotted youth services against the needs of the local population for the first time and found “a consistent picture of youth work black holes” across the country.Bethia McNeil, the director of quality and impact at the YMCA, the country’s largest youth charity, said: “Having this data is critical – we haven’t had anything like this in a very long time, probably since 2010, and youth provision has changed dramatically since then.“It shows how it’s much more fragmented and dispersed now. I’m not surprised at the north-south disparity, sadly, but the sheer number of cold spots is arresting. Some young people probably wouldn’t even know what a youth club is any more because they’ve grown up in a time where that hasn’t been an option. It should provide a jolt for all of us.”The research analysed and mapped 20,000 organisations across England likely to provide youth-related activities, and used this to estimate youth provision rates per 1,000 young people at neighbourhood level. They then created an “unmet need index” based on deprivation affecting children and rates of antisocial behaviour, compared with the number of youth services nearby.The analysis found that 48% of local authorities in England contained at least one neighbourhood with the highest level of unmet youth need.graphicIn Knowsley and Middlesbrough, more than half of all neighbourhoods fell into this category with little to no youth provision but high need. South Oxfordshire, east Hampshire and Richmond upon Thames had the most neighbourhoods with the lowest levels of need and good youth provision for young people.Nick Temple, the SIB chief executive, said: “At some level there is a lot of need everywhere because there just hasn’t been enough investment, but this research shows that in some areas there are still large gaps in provision, or what we might call black holes.”As council-funded youth services have plummeted due to budget cuts, the majority of youth clubs are now delivered by charities, social enterprises and private organisations, making them difficult to track, and there is no consistent national dataset for youth provision.Researchers have said this makes it hard to identify the gaps where any new funding should be targeted. In December, the government announced its long-awaited youth strategy, promising £500m to build, refurbish and equip youth centres across England.McNeil said while this investment was welcomed, it would not replace what had been lost over 15 years of austerity, and it was important to be “extremely careful with where funding is offered” to ensure it has maximum impact.Graphic“We can see the impact where youth provision has disappeared – on education attainment, on young people’s mental, physical health and wellbeing, on their safety and vulnerability,” she said. “Often that manifests as antisocial behaviour, but actually that’s young people who are at risk. Young people are telling us loud and clear that they feel the effects of that disconnection and that isolation.”YMCA analysis has shown spending on youth services by local authorities in England and Wales fell by 10% in 2024-25, the largest annual reduction since 2016-17, as councils struggle to meet rising demand and costs for core services.Over the past 14 years, English local authority funding for youth services has fallen by 76% in real terms, a loss of £1.3bn. Since 2012-13, England has lost about half of its local authority youth workers, and one in 12 councils now report having no youth centres at all.SIB, a social investor that provides loans and grants to charities, has helped governments deliver funding to the youth sector since 2022, including the £300m youth investment fund and the more recent £30m better youth spaces fund. It has published its new research openly to ensure it is used to “make more targeted, place-based decisions as the youth strategy is implemented”.Temple said: “There isn’t an enormous amount of money to go around. It’s not endless. So we always thinking: how do we make this most effective? Where can we invest it to have the biggest impact on the ground?”