Youth club closures in the 2010s resulted in lower GCSE results and increased offending among young people, a study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests.
The report estimated that for every £1 saved from closing youth clubs, “there are societal costs of nearly £3”.
The austerity programme enacted by the coalition government in 2010 resulted in huge cuts to council budgets, which resulted in swathes of youth club closures.
Research earlier this year by Unison found 1,243 council-run youth centres closed between 2010 and 2023.
The new Labour government has pledged to spend £95 million on a new network of “youth future” hubs, in which schools are expected to play a pivotal role.
Closures affected GCSE grades
The IfS compared exam results and offending rates among teenagers living in areas where all youth clubs within a 40-minute walk closed with those teenagers whose nearest youth club stayed open.
It found teenagers whose nearest youth club closed did worse in school.
The impact was “roughly equivalent to a decline of half a grade in one subject”.
But the effects “were even more severe for pupils from lower socio-economic backgrounds”, whose test scores fell by the equivalent of more than a grade in one subject.
The research also suggested youth club closures resulted in a 14 per cent increase in the likelihood of young people engaging in criminal activity in the six years following the closure.
There were “particularly large increases in acquisitive crimes (e.g. theft, robbery and shoplifting), drug offences and violent crimes”.
Youth clubs played ‘direct role’
The IfS said the results “point to the important direct role of youth clubs in supporting teenagers outside of school hours”.
“The research finds, for example, that after a youth club closed, local teenagers reported spending less time doing homework and more time playing videogames and on social media.
“This is likely due to youth clubs providing a good place for studying. But the results also suggest that youth clubs provide wider development benefits – perhaps through mentoring from youth workers – that spill over into school performance and wider life.”
The research “suggests that youth club closures will create greater societal costs than the sums saved from public spending by their closure”. This is because teenagers who do less well in their GCSEs go on to earn less over their lifetime “which is bad for them and bad for the taxpayer”.
“Crimes are costly – to the victim, but also to communities and to the criminal justice system. Taking these factors into account, the research estimates that for every £1 saved from closing youth clubs, there are societal costs of nearly £3.”
New government ‘must learn lessons’
The cost-benefit analysis is “not exhaustive”, but “does suggest that the programme of youth club closures will not have saved the exchequer anything like as much as the up-front reduction in spending”.
“As policy around youth services evolves, and some councils consider further closures, this research highlights the potential returns to youth club provision and its importance in young people’s development.”
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the ASCL school leaders’ union, said funding cuts “have led to the closure of community centres and Sure Start children’s centres, as well as youth clubs, and reduced the capacity of local services to support attendance, mental health and children with special educational needs.
“The most frustrating thing, as this report points out, is that the savings made as a result of these cuts are typically outstripped by the additional problems created down the line.
“These short-sighted decisions often leave school and college leaders to pick up the pieces. The new government has got to learn the lessons of what happens when local authorities and public services do not have the funding they need to function properly.”
