New hope for ‘second class’ youngsters
Council vote tomorrow on changing ‘rigged’ youth funding formula
An ‘unfair’ funding formula that treats thousands of South Gloucestershire youngsters as ‘second class citizens’ could be overhauled tomorrow at a special council meeting.
In June, councillors on the authority’s Children and Young People Committee discussed new figures produced by the council on how its universal youth budget is spread around the district’s 5 area forum
The figures show that young people with similar needs living in similar yet separate communities are notionally allocated wildly different sums by the council. For instance:
- · each child in Tytherington (part of the Frome Vale area forum) is allocated £42, but in neighbouring Thornbury (part of the Severn Vale area forum), the same child is allocated £24;
- · each child in Westerleigh (part of the Frome Vale) is allocated £45, but in neighbouring Pucklechurch (part of the Kings Forest), the same child is allocated £23;
- · each child in Frampton Cotterell (part of the Frome Vale) is allocated £43, but in neighbouring Winterbourne (part of the Southern Brooks), the same child is allocated £24.
The issue of this unfair spread of council youth resources will now be voted on by all councillors at the Full Council meeting on Wednesday 17th July.
Cllr Rob Jones (Con, Bradley Stoke South), a member of the Children and Young People Committee who has been leading the Conservative group’s opposition to the council’s controversial youth changes, said:
“These new figures prove what we have suspected all along - that young people with similar needs living in similar yet separate communities are being allocated wildly different sums based on an unfair postcode lottery.
Conservatives opposed this rigged funding formula because of its unfairness and this new analysis shows the extent to which thousands of youngsters have been stitched up by it.
It has to change in order to be fair and I hope this will be agreed to at the Full Council meeting.”
Fellow Children and Young People Committee member Cllr John Godwin (Con, Winterbourne) said:
“How can it be right or fair for a Winterbourne youngster to be allocated half the amount that a youngster from neighbouring Frampton Cotterell receives when these two youngsters might live just yards away from each other?”
And Cllr Robert Griffin (Con, Pilning and Severn Beach), also a Children and Young People Committee member, added:
“We now have the analysis produced by the council which shows how young people in Thornbury and nearby villages like Pilning and Severn Beach are being treated like second class citizens when it comes to how youth funding is spread around.
The shocking message that the current funding formula sends is that a Pilning youngster living in the Severn Vale is worth half that of a youngster from a similar village a few miles away in the Frome Vale – such unfairness cannot be justified.”