Croydon youth services budget cut by 74% in recent years
by The Student View
The youth services budget in Croydon has fallen by almost three quarters in just three years.
Youth services fell from £3,813,600 in both 2015 and 2016 to £993,000 per year since 2017, a drop of 74 per cent.
The budget for Croydon’s youth centres has stayed consistent, at £45,000 per year for the last five years. The council typically receives revenues of £26,000 each year from the Winterbourne, SCTC (Samuel Coleridge Taylor Centre) and Goldcrest centres combined, dependent on how many bookings each gets across the year.
Croydon Council, who provided the data via a Freedom of Information report, noted, “In 2016, the youth services were separated from Integrated Youth Support Service (IYSS) budget, and therefore figures from then onwards will be exclusively youth service team expenditure.
The findings were made by the media literacy charity The Student View.
A Croydon Council spokesperson said: “Croydon is home to the largest population of under-18s in the capital and despite substantial reductions in government funding offers a wide-variety of opportunities to the borough’s youngest residents.
The award-winning Choose Your Future campaign highlights these to help the borough’s young people reach their full potential. The council has continued to invest in its young people creating a new £3.25m Legacy Youth Zone offering 3G sports pitches, a climbing wall, training kitchen, music recording studio and more, improving access to youth centres and opportunities in the borough.”
Main Pic: Samuel Coleridge Taylor Youth Centre
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