£22.5 million to boost after-school clubs

The prime minister’s announced an £88 million package to support youth clubs and schools to offer more activities, with £22.5 million specifically to go towards after-school clubs.

This is a move to support extracurricular activities for children, with youth services in England seeing a decade-long decline in investment of over 70 per cent. This is part of the Building Creative Futures package, which includes £22.5 million over three years to offer extra-curricular activities in up to 400 schools, and the launch of the Better Youth Spaces programme, a £30.5 million fund to improve youth club infrastructure in areas with the highest levels of child poverty.

£8 million will go towards the rollout of the Local Youth Transformation pilot, which will support local authorities deliver out-of-school youth offers, and the Uniformed Youth Fund will also receive £7.5 million to create thousands of new spaces in youth organisations like The Scouts, Guides, or Volunteer Police Cadets.

Additionally, the package also include the third phase of the Million Hours Fund, which is a £19 million joint investment with the National Lottery Community Fund to deliver over a million additional hours of youth work in areas with high rates of anti-social behaviour.

This investment forms part of the government’s National Youth Strategy, which is due to be published this autumn.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: “Growing up today is hard for young people. As they navigate their way through the online world, too often they find themselves isolated at home and disconnected from their communities.

“As a government, we have a duty to act on this worrying trend. Today’s investment is about offering a better alternative: transformative, real-world opportunities that will have an impact in communities across the country, so young people can discover something new, find their spark and develop the confidence and life skills that no algorithm can teach.

“Through our Plan for Change, we’re backing parents by not only protecting out young people online, but giving them the support and opportunities they deserve so no child falls through the cracks.”