Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how much the Government has spent on youth services in (a) Birmingham and (b) the West Midlands in each of the last 12 years.

We currently do not hold information on the number of youth workers and youth centres in Birmingham, however we are working with the National Youth Agency to conduct the National Youth Sector Census to better understand the spread of services, and number of youth workers in different areas across the country.

As set out in section 507B of the Education Act 1996, Local Authorities have a statutory duty to ‘secure, so far as is reasonably practicable, sufficient provision of educational and recreational leisure-time activities for young people’. This is funded from the Local Government settlement, which was over £12 billion last year.

DCMS is currently reviewing the statutory duty and its associated guidance to assess the effectiveness after a call for responses from key youth stakeholders. Local authorities are required by section 507B(12) to have regard to the statutory guidance when exercising their functions in relation to the statutory duty.