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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if she will take steps to encourage a partnership approach between statutory services and the voluntary sector to provide local youth services.

The government recognises that local youth provision relies on a mix of statutory and voluntary sector provision. The Youth Investment Fund will seek to build on locally available provision and will encourage bids that show all partners working together to maximise the impact of investment. In addition, the National Citizen Service (NCS) delivery model supports partnership working between the NCS Trust and voluntary sector to deliver the NCS programme. In 2021, 36% of NCS contracts were delivered by partners in the charity sector.