Bristol City Council has denied trade union claims that huge budget cuts will mean redundancies for youth workers and loss of job security for hundreds of others.
Unison fears that a £400,000 reduction – almost one-fifth – in funding for targeted youth services (TYS), which provide intensive 1-2-1 group sessions and outreach support for thousands of children, will “hit disadvantaged young people the hardest and put jobs at risk in the community sector”. On top of the cutbacks, the union has also been told the local authority wants to move away from commissioned services to a system of grant funding for the youth sector, which the union “strongly opposes” amid concerns staff could be left on fixed-term contracts as money would be available only for specific projects.
The council says the forthcoming Youth Zone will deliver “world-class services” for many youngsters who already receive support, attract £900,000 a year from outside sources to help run it and add about 100 jobs for youth workers. It says the intention in switching from commissioned services to grant funding is to “strengthen the resilience of the sector” and help develop the workforce who support young people in the community but do not have job certainty.
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Targeted youth services is the latest battleground between unions and City Hall in the local authority’s proposed budget for 2022/23 and beyond, as Unison has now formally raised two collective disputes – over cuts to museums and archives, and reductions to trade union facility time. In a statement to full council, which is due to meet to set the budget at the second attempt on Wednesday, March 2, Unison said papers to the meeting suggested the £200,000 cuts in 2022/23 and a further £200,000 the following year were only half the story, with a further £400,000 reserved from TYS for the new Bristol Youth Zone.
Area organiser Steve Mills said: “This means the actual value of the contract dropping by nearly 38 per cent and it is impossible to see how that won’t result in redundancies for our members in the organisations that provide the city’s youth services.” The council says this interpretation is incorrect and that “no further reductions” are proposed to youth support spending beyond the £400,000 by 2023/24 listed in the budget savings programme.
It says the current TYS contract ends in 2023, at which point £400,000 of its remaining funding would be reallocated to the Youth Zone, which was agreed by cabinet in September 2020 towards the South Bristol project’s £1.3million annual running costs. Unison’s statement said deputy mayor and cabinet member for children's services, education and equalities Cllr Asher Craig had told the union that the council was not just reducing the value of the contract but also “seeking to grant fund and not commission the youth sector service eliminating the negative impact of competitive tendering”.
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It said: “The introduction of a grant-based funding model to replace tendered services is of great concern to us. Implemented incorrectly it can easily result in a market of fixed-term contracts for workers as organisations have access only to project-based funding.
“Removing job security for hundreds of workers in the city is obviously something we are strongly opposed to. Those who serve our communities and help young people through some of the most difficult of situations should not be rewarded with uncertainty for their own futures. Any system must ensure that TUPE rights are afforded to workers if and when project funding comes to an end.”
A Bristol City Council spokesperson said: “By seeking to grant fund rather than commission targeted youth services, our intention is to strengthen the resilience of the sector and to work more collaboratively, to establish how funding can develop the workforce who currently deliver support within the community without the benefit of job certainty. The total value of the proposed budget reductions are contained within the budget papers, this amounts to £200,000 in 2022/23 and a further £200,000 in 2023/24. There are no further reductions being proposed to youth support spending.
“The current targeted youth services contract comes to an end in 2023. At this point it is proposed that £400,000 of the funding for this contract will be reallocated to the Youth Zone, which will then deliver world-class services to support many of the young people who have used youth services’ support through the contract.
"This redirection of funds will enable inward investment of a further £900,000 and the addition of around 100 jobs for youth workers at the Youth Zone. This use of funding expands the provision available to young people and increases the opportunities for employment in the sector."
But budget papers to full council say: “Reduced budget will mean less capacity within the service, and in all likelihood provider staff redundancies or not filling vacant posts. This is likely to affect the generic youth work/wellbeing offer and the service's ability to accept referrals for 121 support.
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“It may result in more partnership working to deliver group sessions or the stopping of some group sessions.” Services “impacted by this proposal” include targeted positive youth activities in deprived areas, support for youngsters facing difficulties with health and wellbeing, substance misuse and healthy relationships, support for young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) or at risk of becoming NEET, and “providing responsive support when required to particular issues such as crime, antisocial behaviour, child sexual exploitation, violence and lack of community integration”.
The papers add: “The proposal is to reduce the targeted youth services budget by £200,000 in 2022/23 from a current value of £2,125,602 to £1,925,602, and then to recommission the service at a further saving of £200,000 in 2023/24. “In addition to this, £400,000 will be taken from the budget for the new Bristol Youth Zone. This will be factored into the recommissioning and design of the new service.”
The reports say the service currently supports about 2,500 young people through 1-2-1 support and 1,000 via group/open access a year, but that before Covid the figure for the latter was also 2,500.
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