A national youth strategy

Approximate read time: 10 minutes

On 13 March 2025, the House of Lords is due to consider the following question for short debate:

Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Conservative) to ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in developing a National Youth Strategy.

1. Announcement of a new national youth strategy

In October 2024 the government committed to developing a “strategy for a generation of young people […] to support a generation to succeed”.^[1] It provided further details in an announcement on 12 November 2024.^[2] The government has said this would be the first national youth strategy in over 10 years.^[3] Young people would be given the opportunity “to co-produce a new approach with the government towards the support services, facilities and opportunities they need outside the school gates to benefit their lives and futures”.^[4] The strategy would:

• prioritise the delivery of better coordinated youth services at a local, regional and national level
• ensure decision-making was moved from a “one-size fits all approach” to one which handed power “back to young people and their communities”
• rebuild “a thriving and sustainable sector”

In turn, the government said this would support its missions and spread opportunities, “making our streets safer and taking pressure off health services”.

The development of the strategy is being supported by a youth advisory body and an expert advisory group which have been established by the government.^[5] The youth advisory body consists of 13 young people from various sectors. Their experience includes advocacy, violence prevention, social mobility and mental health. The expert group will “guide the national conversation with young people, providing expertise and challenging thinking throughout the national youth’s strategy development”. It consists of 14 people from a range of sectors, including Isa Guha, a sports presenter and founder of a cricket charity championing women and girls, Take Her Lead. The full list of the membership of both groups is available on the government’s website.^[6]

Alongside developing the national youth strategy, the government referred to related policies, including that it was launching a ‘local youth transformation pilot’. This would:

[…] provide tools, guidance, peer challenge and funding to build back local authorities’ lost capability in the youth space, sowing the seeds for a much-needed rejuvenation of local youth services.^[7]

The government has said it expects to publish the new national youth strategy in the summer, with an interim report published in the spring.^[8]

1.1 Engagement with young people

The government explained the process of creating the strategy would start with inviting young people to face-to-face engagements to ensure “their perspectives and aspirations are at the heart of decision making”.^[9]

In a written statement the secretary of state for culture, media and sport, Lisa Nandy, set out further information.^[10] She said the government would improve its understanding of young people’s priorities and would also run a consultation. Ms Nandy said this would feed into a report called “Today’s Youth, Tomorrow’s Nation” which would inform the government’s new approach.

The government launched a “national listening exercise” on 5 March 2025 to give young people an opportunity to feed into the strategy’s development.^[11] It described this as a period of consultation that would take the form of an online survey as well as physical events such as peer-led focus groups called ‘democracy cafes’, and workshop sessions. The survey will close on 16 April 2025. The announcement added that young people had already been attending democracy cafes and that continuing engagement would be facilitated by a range of organisations.

An expert consortium of partners will facilitate the widespread engagement with young people, comprising market research consultancy Savanta; key leader in youth-led engagement in the UK, My Life My Say (MLMS); and the #iwill movement, a social movement supporting Youth Social Action with coordination from leading civil society and social action charity Volunteering Matters and UK Youth. They will be working with 10 youth collaborators, young people recruited to ensure all activities are genuinely co-produced.^[12]

Young people would also be involved through the youth advisory group.

In a Westminster Hall debate in February 2025 on access to universal and targeted youth provision, Stephanie Peacock, parliamentary under secretary of state for culture, media and sport, said the government was also developing a toolkit for MPs so they “can run their own workshops and discussions with young people or share this toolkit with organisations in their constituencies that work with young people”.^[13]

1.2 Funding for youth facilities

In its November 2024 announcement the government also said it would provide £85mn in funding for youth facilities.^[14] This included £26mn through the ‘Better youth spaces’ programme, which would provide money for youth clubs to renovate and buy new equipment. Additionally, £100mn would be provided from dormant assets funding and used “to deliver youth outcomes between 2024 and 2028, supporting the provision of services, facilities and opportunities for young people across the country”.^[15] The government has stated that further detail on what funding from dormant assets could support would be set out “in due course” in a forthcoming dormant assets strategy.

In answer to a written question, the government said on 4 March 2025 that the funding commitments in the national youth strategy would be influenced by its consultation with young people and by the spending review:

The government will publish the national youth strategy this summer. The detail and scale of the funding commitments included in the strategy will be shaped by engagement with young people and the youth sector and will be dependent on spending review decisions.^[16]

1.3 Closing the National Citizen Service

As part of the announcement the government said the National Citizen Service (NCS) programme would be wound down from 2025 as part of the government’s new approach to supporting young people. The NCS runs experiences designed to help young people:^[17]

• develop their confidence, independence and skills
• connect them with people from all walks of life
• empower them to make a difference in their communities and the wider society

These experiences are mostly funded by the government.

In an oral statement to the House of Commons on the national youth strategy in November 2024, Lisa Nandy said the rise of social media was a major change since the NCS was established:

In 2011, when the National Citizen Service was established, Facebook and X had only 700 million users. Now, they have over 3 billion. TikTok had not even been dreamt of. In 2011, an estimated one in eight 10 to 15-year-olds had a probable mental health problem. Now, it is one in five. The world has changed and we need a youth strategy that reflects that.^[18]

She said the government had not taken the decision lightly and it was grateful for the work of the body and its staff. She said that the NCS’s current chair, Harris Bokhari, would be an adviser on the national youth strategy.

2. Commentary on the government’s announcement

In response to Lisa Nandy’s oral statement in the House of Commons, Stuart Andrew, shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport, said the Conservative Party welcomed “any focus that the government are putting on young people”.^[19] However, he said that while his party supported certain measures, such as the local youth transformation pilot, it did not support the closure of the NCS. He described it as a great scheme that had cross-party support. He questioned whether the rise of social media meant the scheme was no longer needed and he asked what would happen to the funding savings generated:

If the government intend to listen to young people, can the secretary of state explain why it is scrapping a scheme with which 93% of participants were satisfied? She says that we do not need citizenship because of social media, but I would argue that we probably do. The cancellation of the NCS also means that a hole will develop in youth services being delivered in 2025, so can the secretary of state tell me what immediate action will be taken to prevent it from developing, and how she intends to spend the £50mn of savings that she has announced—or is that a loss to the sector?^[20]

Mr Andrew also said that the money from dormant assets was money that the previous Conservative government had announced.

Lisa Nandy responded saying that the government was working with the NCS trust to ensure the closure was done in “an orderly fashion” and that all associated costs were met. She said that her department was currently engaged in a business planning process. Ms Nandy said the government recognised the funding challenges that affected the sector and the government’s funding announcements were “intended to ensure that we start to put rocket boosters behind young people”.^[21]

The National Youth Agency (NYA), which describes itself as the national body for youth work in England, has welcomed the government’s development of a national youth strategy.^[22] The organisation’s CEO, Leigh Middleton, said the NYA recognised the “challenging situation” local authorities faced amid rising costs. He said his organisation therefore welcomed the local youth transformation pilot. Mr Middleton added the NYA reflected “with sadness” on the closure of the NCS. He said that “as a previous NCS regional provider, we witnessed the programme’s impact first-hand and felt privileged to work alongside a high-quality team whose dedication made the programme a success”.

UK Youth, which describes itself as the UK’s leading youth work charity, said it also welcomed the national youth strategy’s development, but was concerned “there are already red warning lights flashing”.^[23] Jacob Diggle, UK Youth’s chief impact officer, said the government’s announcements were “worryingly under-resourced and this threatens the mission on take-off”. He said:

The closure of the NCS and lack of renewal of the youth investment fund will take hundreds of millions of pounds out of the sector, which is already on its knees. This includes funding for about 250 youth organisations which were expecting NCS funding from April next year. Closing, rather than repurposing, the NCS will risk wasting millions of pounds and years of momentum.^[24]

The Youth Futures Foundation, a national ‘What works centre’ for youth employment, also welcomed the announcement of the development of a new national youth strategy.^[25]

3. Read more

• House of Commons Library, ‘Youth services in the UK’, 7 November 2024

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Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash