Core indicator
Youth sector
Local authority expenditure for youth services
Last updated March 2023
(March 2023)
Last reviewed: July 2024
What is this sector and how are we measuring it?
Youth services can provide young people with important spaces and sources of support outside of the home. We also know that budget cuts have led to increasing pressure on youth workers and the closures of many spaces for young people, such as youth centres. While the evidence isn’t strong, a report by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport shows a link between decreases in youth expenditure and increases in bike theft, shoplifting, weapons possession and reoffending, although not violent crime.
Learn more about YEF’s work within the youth sector, and the evidence-based approaches for what works in reducing violence.
To give us a broad picture of what’s happening in the youth sector, we’ve chosen spending on young people’s services as our core measure. This includes universal provision (e.g. leisure, cultural and sports-based activities, often based in youth centres) and targeted provision (e.g. substance misuse or teenage pregnancy services). We’ve adjusted these numbers to account for inflation using GDP deflators published by ONS and present all spending in real terms based on that adjustment.
What does our core indicator show?
Overall, this measure shows a mixed picture. There have been significant reductions in the grants paid to local authorities over the past decade. Consequently, the amount of money spent by local authorities on youth services has also fallen. Since 2012/13, spending has fallen by more than half a billion pounds to less than half of what it was (down 56%). However, more recently, these falls have flattened, and spending on youth services has started to increase. In 2022/23, it rose 3% on the previous year – to 8% above pre-Covid-19 (2019/20) levels.