While the government plans its strategy, youth clubs like ours could soon be lost

In March 2025, the government launched a groundbreaking new listening exercise called Deliver You – an important opportunity for young people to explain what they want and need from their youth clubs and services going forward. This will inform a nationwide youth strategy designed to hand back power to young people and their communities and to rebuild a flourishing and viable youth sector.

The Covid pandemic and lockdown left lots of young people isolated, saw a major decline in their wellbeing, increased mental ill health issues and saw them cut off from their peers and society in general, at crucial stages in their developmental journeys. 

This came on top of £1.2 billion in council funding cuts to youth services in England between 2010/11 and 2023/24. So, clearly Deliver You is desperately needed – but how long will it take before frontline services and the nation’s young people actually see the benefits of the consultation and new strategy? No one seems to know, which has left the youth sector and services at a cliff edge.

Hastings Youth Commons – a project run by Hastings Commons, an ecosystem of like-minded charities, community organisations and social entrepreneurs, and backed by the Youth Investment Fund – provides a youth club four nights a week: a warm, safe space where 11- to 25-year-olds can come for food and activities at no cost.

More than 100 young people per week rely on this provision. Like lots of other youth clubs, we are at risk of having to close our doors until the government actions its new strategy.

Read more:

• ‘Time to dump the housing ladder’: Inside the fightback against the temporary housing crisis
• The accidental food bank: How youth clubs are becoming frontline services
• The real Byker Grove: Inside the youth clubs that inspired Ant and Dec’s childhood TV classic

Honour (they/them), a 12-year-old who is home educated, has been coming to our youth clubs for the last eight months and is now on the youth council. We asked Honour what impact coming to the youth club had had on their life. “It’s definitely made me more active and more creative… it’s got me seeing my friends more and doing exercise. It’s just had a pretty good impact,” they said.

As well as loving the food (“it’s epic”), they told us that they like being around the youth workers, who are fun to chat to and help them. When asked what they did before coming to the youth club, they told us: “Nothing really. Didn’t do anything before this. Just kind of chilled. I didn’t have any idea of what a Tuesday or Wednesday night could be like before coming here”. 

If the youth club closed, Honour said: “I’d be devastated. I love it here. I definitely think a lot of people would be pretty upset.”

Lae is 18 years old and lives in Hastings. She has been coming to the youth club for nearly two years. As well as being part of the club, Lae now volunteers and cooks for the younger groups and she is part of the youth council.

She told us: “It’s a bit of everything, gives opportunities to meet new people and receive help. It has opened up more opportunities for my future career. I give back to my community, I am starting my level one youth work course. It has also helped keep me off the streets.” 

On what would happen if the youth club closed, she told us: “A lot more people would be out doing things they shouldn’t and a lot more people would have no way of getting the help they need and young people would have no way to access the social side of things especially young people that don’t go to school.” She also said the town “would become more dangerous” without the club.

To avoid these outcomes, we need interim youth funding now so that our precious youth clubs can provide the consistent support young people in England need and deserve, while the government’s longer-term strategy is developed.

Sidney Ewing is the youth programme manager and Gini Simpson is the creative lead at Hastings Commons.

Promises are easy to break. Sign Big Issue’s petition for a Poverty Zero law and help us make tackling poverty a legal requirement, not just a policy priority.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.