Teens are left to their own devices as council axes all youth services

Norfolk county council says it can no longer afford to fund clubs and hundreds of projects for young people. But what effect will such drastic action have on its youngsters? By Rachel Williams

Taped to the inside of a Sainsbury’s window in King’s Lynn, a printout of a map reminds teenagers of the town’s restrictions. Next to it, a notice on Norfolk Constabulary headed paper spells out the terms of a dispersal order: within the marked area, groups of two or more youngsters can be broken up by police not only if they have caused intimidation, harassment, alarm or distress to members of the public but also if their behaviour is deemed likely to do so. Initially, the order focused mainly on the area around the supermarket and adjacent bus station, but when groups of young people who were deemed to be behaving antisocially relocated, it was extended to cover most of the town centre. Drinking in groups, verbal abuse and reckless or dangerous cycling are among the antisocial activities listed.

“We’re banned from the whole thing,” says Aaron, 16, one of a group of five youngsters outside the supermarket. “The police come round all the time.”

“It’s crap, because you can’t hang around with your mates,” adds his friend, who doesn’t want to be named. “It’s a shithole.”

Ask almost any young person what there is to do in Lynn, as it is known locally, and they are quick to give the same answer: precious little.

Since May, when Norfolk county council cut all its £4.8m funding for youth services, there is even less to do. Across the East Anglian county, around 300 projects have closed, many operating out of council-run youth centres.

Across England, youth services have been disproportionately hit by government-imposed public spending cuts, with more than £100m axed from local authority youth services by April this year, according to the Confederation of Heads of Young People’s Services. A survey of 41 of its members found some councils cutting 70%, 80% or even 100% of youth services. Almost 3,000 full-time staff have been lost, and universal services such as youth clubs have been hit hardest: 96% of members who responded said club activities would be either reduced or stopped altogether by next April.

Historically, Norfolk was already one of the lowest spenders on youth services, according to Doug Nicholls, the national officer of the community and youth workers’ sector of union Unite. “To meet the national standard they would have needed 90 more youth workers instead of closing the service,” he says.

In King’s Lynn, west Norfolk, the cuts have meant the closure of Providence Street youth centre, which provided free activities including football, basketball, pool, creative arts and music, as well as computers, a homework group for teenagers at risk of exclusion from school, and clubs for young carers and young people with disabilities. It was used by around 100 young people a week.

As a result, there is no longer easy access to counselling from trained youth workers and a sexual health worker, and no more outreach work in the trouble spots around town, say anti-cuts campaigners.

Jack Brinded, a 20-year-old activist with the Norfolk Coalition Against the Cuts, says growing up in the county was already a pretty bleak experience. “There’s few enough projects out there without them cutting more. This is the sector that’s got the least fat to trim. They’re cutting into muscle.”

The Broads may be beautiful but they don’t offer much to teenagers, he says. “It’s not a great time to be a young person in Norfolk. In the long term, these cuts will mean young people won’t feel it’s a home, just a place where they exist,” he adds. “I don’t think that bodes well in terms of antisocial behaviour, or for trying to build communities and getting people to help out. It’s going to have the exact opposite effect of what the big society was supposed to be.”

It would be disingenuous to suggest the young people hanging around outside Sainsbury’s are there because the youth club has closed; teenagers have always congregated around benches in market towns. But Aaron went on an outdoor activity trip through the Providence Street centre last year and laments its loss. “I used to do my work there on the computers, and play ping pong,” he says. “I used to love going there. That was a nice little centre for people to go to.” Yet, he was the only one in his group who had used it.

The knock-on effects are more subtle but already in evidence, says Lindsay Forrest, who runs a YMCA hostel on the outskirts of town. In recent months, she has seen young people she knows who used to go to the youth centre – and would never have taken drugs – using cannabis with more marginalised teenagers. “People who’ve got nothing to do are getting bored and smoking,” she says. Her residents have been hit too. “I’ve got nothing for these guys to do during the summer – there are 13 of them, and the majority of them are 17-year-old blokes,” Forrest says. “Before, there would have been summer courses, summer camps.”

Before it closed in December, Providence Street provided a first port of call for older teenagers with nowhere to live. From there, they would be sent to Forrest, who would take them through the process of getting a hostel bed. Now, anyone under 18 has to go to the council’s children’s services. The result is that they don’t go, Forrest says, because they tend to come from families that view social services with suspicion.

Instead, she finds them sleeping in the park. “You walk your dogs and you bump into young people sleeping under a tree,” she says.

The end of the education maintenance allowance and cuts to income support are leaving more families unable to afford to keep teenagers at home, she says. Forrest’s referrals file has doubled in the last six months, and she has had to create a “crash room” at the YMCA for extra temporary residents which is always full.

For other groups of young people, the loss of services means increased isolation. Carly Hain, 18, a Providence Street volunteer for four years, is furious that young carers and teenagers with disabilities will lose an opportunity to socialise. “People counted on it,” she says. “It is so upsetting.”

On an online petition to the council to save the centre, a young carer says she will feel the cut keenly. “It’s going to affect me greatly, because it means I can have a break from caring for my brother and keeps me sane,” she writes.

“Round here it is a lonely place anyway,” another signatory says. “It would be a shame to remove the only enjoyment some people get out of the world.”

Questioned in the aftermath of the recent riots across England about the effect of cutting youth services, the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said he doubted that many of those involved had ever been to a youth centre. But would young people who use youth centres be more inclined to bad behaviour if the resource is taken away?

Although no rioting was reported in Norfolk, King’s Lynn’s chief inspector, Andy Porter, believes the cuts will have an impact on antisocial behaviour in the town. But it is too early to judge how the effects are playing out, he says, pointing out that the dispersal order was put in place before Providence Street closed in order to address a long-term problem.

Contrary to what the group outside Sainsbury’s says, Porter claims the dispersal order is used discriminately and only when youths are genuinely being antisocial, not just hanging around. “It’s sorted out the main perpetrators,” he says. He believes that the cuts to youth services will be mitigated by the work of the Discovery Centre, a volunteer-run centre in North Lynn. But it mainly works with younger children.

Norfolk county council says it “simply can no longer afford” to provide youth services directly. It is banking on more voluntary groups and social enterprises setting up to keep young people occupied. It has allocated £900,000 of its early intervention grant to support vulnerable young people and will create district-based youth advisory boards.

A council spokeswoman says discussions with focus groups during the summer about the new approach had been “largely positive”; a report detailing responses is due to go to its cabinet in September.

By early afternoon there is a new gang at the seats by the supermarket. An 18-year-old girl sits on a covered bin. What she likes to do is get drunk, she says, pulling cans of pre-mixed alcohol from her pockets. She bought 12 in the morning for £1.50 each. She smokes cannabis daily, frequently takes ketamine and speed and says she will be going to prison for assault and battery. She is excited about it, she claims, because she will see her sister there. Her equally drunk 20-year-old friend says she went to college and was looking for work in health and social care until about six months ago, when she “got in with the wrong crowd”.

“I used to be a proper nice girl. Drink and drugs have changed me. My life just went downhill,” she says.

For Forrest, it is the sort of scene that drives home the danger of the cuts. “It’s just the boredom,” she says. “Boredom causes trouble.”