Kington Town Council asked for £25,000 to be a part of Herefordshire Youth Strategy

Concerns have been expressed about a request for £25,000 for Kington to join Herefordshire's Youth Strategy.

Herefordshire Council has come up with a youth strategy proposal and is seeking support from the county's market towns.

The strategy seeks to develop a more coordinated and sustainable approach to youth provision across the county, with particular emphasis on partnership working, accessible services in rural communities, youth engagement and developing the youth-work workforce.

The Strategy specifically envisages town and parish councils playing a role in local delivery and the establishment of local delivery forums linked to the Central Youth Forum.

Tina Russell, Herefordshire Council's Corporate Director of Children’s Services, said at a recent meeting that all parish and town councils would be asked to include youth service funding as an item when setting their budgets.

The proposal is to establish a pooled budget, with Tina referring to potential contributions of between £25,000 and £50,000 per Town Council, to provide ongoing funding for youth services. The pooled funding would contribute towards the development of services including mobile and virtual youth provision, intended to be accessible across Herefordshire.

This approach reflects the adopted Youth Strategy, which specifically proposes maximising grant opportunities and exploring pooled budgets for shared youth worker capacity, equipment and mobile activity units.

Herefordshire Council has committed £250,000 towards the Youth Strategy Action Plan, a further £150,000 towards commissioning youth provision and an anticipated £150,000 contribution from the Police and Crime Commissioner, which is due to be confirmed.

This is in addition to Herefordshire Council staff and workforce resources supporting the programme.

The strategy proposes the development of a mobile Youth Hub, digital/virtual youth provision and transport solutions to improve accessibility.

The action plan also includes developing pop-up youth provision to reach rural communities and increasing opportunities for young people to become involved in local democracy.

It is hoped to launch the strategy this autumn.

Kington Town Councillor Richard Banks said Ledbury, Leominster and Ross Town Councils have budgets in excess of £800,000 and larger, wealthier populations than Kington.

He said: “Kington has a budget of around 20% of their budgets, and, at the low end, Herefordshire Council is asking us to contribute £25,000 or 15% of our budget. This compares to an ask of around 3% of the budget for the larger councils.

“If we feel we want to support it, then I think our contribution should be pro-rata to our relative budget - so, if the large councils contribute £25,000 then we should contribute £5,000.

“Otherwise, Kington, the smallest and poorest council, will effectively be subsidising the larger ones.

“We also should have measurable assurance that all of our contribution will be spent in Kington and not on overhead or in the other market towns.

“In my opinion we should also have measurable assurances that Kington will receive, at the very minimum, pro-rata provision of services from the project. Therefore, given our size, remoteness, and limited resources I think we should ask for a higher per capita amount of the county-wide budget.

“In general, though, this is another example Herefordshire Council pushing spending on to us and should therefore be intensely scrutinised for value and use to our precept payers. I also think this needs to be coordinated between the Mayors of the Market Towns to ensure that we speak with a united voice.”

Kington Mayor Councillor Martin Woolford said; “Our needs are different to the needs of Leominster or Ross and I don't think we can justify £25,000 out of our budget.

“I think in general we can support the idea but with a contribution from our budget that we can afford. We don't know what we can afford yet or how this money is going to be spent. We want it to be spent here.”

Members agreed to support the idea and to contribute what the town council's budget allows.