Youth crime report highlights lack of funding for Enfield
27th April 2009
David Burrowes welcomes London Councils’ latest report on youth crime in the capital which highlights lack of funding for Enfield.
Local MP David Burrowes has welcomed the London Councils’ recently published report ‘Funding the front line: tackling youth crime in London’.
The report sets out some of the difficulties faced by local authorities and suggests solutions which would allow a more efficient and locally flexible response to youth crime and its causes. One of the problems highlighted is the diversity and duplication of funding streams. There are 10 main initiatives in London to deal with youth crime set up by a range of different departments, meaning that funding is often duplicated on overlapping initiatives and needless bureaucracy is created.
Enfield has been a victim of this confused system where despite being listed in the 10 boroughs with the highest incidence of serious youth violence, Enfield Council has not been eligible for any of the 10 available funding streams.
David Burrowes as both an Enfield MP and Shadow Justice Minister said:
“I welcome this new report and will press the Government to consider the recommendations which it has made and recognise the need to provide local responses to youth crime. We need to reduce the bureaucratic obstacles to secure funding which often conflict rather than support local solutions. I am extremely disappointed that Enfield is not considered eligible for any of the various funding streams despite the 132 incidences of serious youth violence recorded last year. The report highlights the funding problem I highlighted last November when I put a question to Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, challenging him as to why Enfield was not among the first tranche of 69 local authorities due to be funded by the Youth Crime Action Plan despite the high number of youth fatalities in the area due to knife crime. In his reply he said that those areas with the highest levels of crime were being targeted first. If Enfield, being in the top 10, is not high priority then what is?”
The Youth Crime Action Plan is one of the 10 initiatives to deal with youth crime and has a budget of £700,000.
