There is a large disparity in youth services across London as eight boroughs have no council run youth clubs, according to data from London councils.
This comes following significant cuts to youth services across London over the last 15 years, with the average number of council run youth clubs per borough falling by 37% from 2010 to 2025 according to new FOI data from 12 councils.
The following eight councils do not directly run any youth clubs in their borough: Kensington and Chelsea, City of London, Westminster, Brent, Hammersmith and Fulham, Hounslow, Waltham Forest and Sutton.
The majority of council-run youth clubs are concentrated in East London, with many London boroughs now outsourcing their youth services through contracts or investment in voluntary and community services.
Kevin Lema is a youth engagement manager at Caius House Youth, a charity and youth club in Battersea, Wandsworth and has been involved in youth work since he was 17.
He said: “It is important because young people then get access to real leaders. Leaders that want to see them get a brighter future.
“If they don’t have people like ourselves here who are they going to look at? We’ve got some great people, some great youth workers and some great leaders.”
Caius House Youth often invite inspirational leaders to chat to young people and sometimes record podcast episodes in the centre’s podcast studio.
Lema spoke about his own experience going to youth clubs as a child in North West London and highlighted that many of the youth activities where he lived gradually stopped over time.
He said this resulted in an increase in serious violence in Rayners Lane, Harrow, and was held at gun point himself on separate occasions, despite having no involvement in the altercations.
Lema said: “Because of people in the area and stuff you can get caught up in it.
“Luckily enough I knew where my head was, I knew where I was going. But that could instantly become, you pull a gun at me, I forget my future.
“That is the sort of effect it has when you don’t have these youth clubs in place.”
A 2024 IFA working paper found that young people who no longer had access to a youth club were 14% more likely to engage in criminal activity in the six years following closure.
Lema acknowledged that Battersea has a lot more youth services available for young people than other London areas, as alongside voluntary sector youth services, Wandsworth has seven council run youth clubs or centres.
This is the second highest number of council run youth clubs or centres out of the boroughs included in the data.
Lema said: “If you turn around the corner there’s a youth club here.”
He described how they often signpost young people to other clubs in the area if they have specific interests, pointing to a wider community of support youth clubs operate in.
He said: “Most importantly it is about socialising and being in an environment where you feel super safe.
“For me that’s how I made my friends and how I found out about different things going on in the area.”
Lema also expressed that one of the challenges they are facing at the moment is getting young people to come and socialise, which has gotten worse since the pandemic.
He said: “They find it so hard to communicate, like even giving somebody eye contact is the hardest thing that they can do.
“It’s because they don’t socialise. They’re just in their rooms.”
Lema said the difference between the children’s confidence from when they first attend the youth club to the end is massive.
Caius House Youth offers a range of physical activities and creative pursuits throughout the week along with rooms for young people to socialise in.
Lema highlighted that in his year working at Caius House Youth he’s seen how many parents of the children who attend, also used to attend youth clubs.
He said: “I want us to still be able to carry on that tradition of having those great impacts and creating a great future for young people.”
Maria Ako is youth manager at Crystal Palace Community Trust, an organisation in Bromley, a borough with four council run youth clubs.
The Crystal Palace Community Trust is an independent community charity, although it receives some of its funding contributions from both Bromley and Southwark councils.
Ako told South West Londoner about the potential dangers of the decrease in the number of youth clubs and their decline in funding, particularly after the Covid-19 pandemic.
She said: “Youth club was an answer to a problem so if you remove that answer the problem will then persist or come back. Even if it’s in an evolved way.
“I think one of the biggest changes we’ve seen in the last ten years is the turnover of staff.
“It seems like they have one foot out the door, because they need to pay for their living and the cost of living is just a bit crazy.
“As there’s a high turnover of staff we’re spending more time trying to establish a team and work culture, because that changes as new people come in.”
According to young people’s charity YMCA’s 2025 Beyond the Brink? report there was a one third reduction in the number of youth workers in England between 2012/2013 and 2023.
Councils have a statutory duty to ‘secure, so far as is reasonably practicable, sufficient provision of educational and recreational leisure-time activities for young people’ according to the Local Government Association.
However, local services are able to decide whether they run them directly, contract organisations or give funding to community or voluntary organisations.
Brent Council is one London borough that no longer directly runs any of it’s youth clubs and centres since they stopped funding them in 2016, after the disbandment of their youth service.
Councillor Gwen Grahl, Cabinet Member for Children and Young people at Brent Council said: “Many councils across the UK have been forced to make the difficult decision not to run their Youth Services directly.
“These choices have come in the wake of 14 years of Conservative austerity. Brent Council is not alone in having to build networks across the voluntary sector to support youth provisions.”
The Labour majority council recently invested £4 million in infrastructure funding to four of Brent’s longstanding youth organisations chosen by a youth panel consisting of 14-20 year olds from Brent.
On the other hand, Tower Hamlets has the most council run youth clubs at 30, ten times the average number which is three council run youth clubs per borough.
Despite this, the number of council run youth clubs in Tower Hamlets more than halved between 2010 and 2023, with the biggest decrease – a total of 14 – happening between 2016 and 2017.
However, from 2023 to 2024 Tower Hamlets gained 12 more council run youth clubs/centres, bringing the current total to 30.
This increase coincides with when Mayor of Tower Hamlets Lutfur Rahman announced the investment of £13.7 million into a new youth service, Young Tower Hamlets, in 2023.
In 2024, Tower Hamlets had the highest levels of child poverty in London.
In an effort to improve Youth Services, the UK Government has publicized the Better Youth Spaces programme, a £30.5 million fund to improve youth club infrastructure in areas with the highest levels of child poverty .
This was part of a £88 million investment in UK youth services announced in August this year.
All eight councils with no council-run youth clubs were approached for comment.
A spokesperson for Waltham Forest said: “Following consultation and co-design with young people in January 2023 we launched our Youth Space programme – Space4All.
“The council works in partnership with youth-focused VCS (Voluntary & Community Sector) organisations to deliver these youth spaces across our borough – to date we have 25 running each week, Monday to Saturday.”
A Hounslow Spokesperson said: “During the past two years, through our Thriving Communities funding, Hounslow Council has awarded nearly £400,000 to support our young people with a range of activities covering sport and the environment to training and up-skilling, health, and well-being.
This funding is strategically considered based on need and has benefitted a diverse range of sixteen community groups rather than what’s traditionally classed as ‘youth clubs’.
“Additional funding for youth projects is available through an existing contract with Brentford FC Community Sports Trust.
“The Council is also currently responding to feedback from young people across the borough, following a 10-week youth engagement campaign, to ensure our wider youth offer reflects what young people in the borough want and need.
“This includes different Council teams and partner organisations working together to coordinate opportunities for young people.”
A spokesperson from Sutton Council said: “Sutton Council works closely with local charity, community and faith sector partners and it commissions local organisations to deliver youth services in the borough.
“So, whilst we may not have any council owned youth clubs, we do commission others to deliver them for us.
Hammersmith and Fulham Council declined to comment, although the council announced in November, £430,000 of funding to the King Charles III Coronation Youth Fund which will fund 21 organisations that support local 11- to 24-year-olds.
A spokesperson for the City of London Corporation said: “We’re proud to offer youth clubs in the Square Mile, ensuring the City’s young people can access high-quality support, opportunities, and activities.
“We commission a specialist youth club provider for the City’s young people, including those with special educational needs and disabilities.
“These sessions take place at the Golden Lane and Portsoken community centres, with programmes tailored to different age groups.
“We also commission the delivery of a Youth Forum, which gives young people a voice in local issues.”
Westminster, and Kensington and Chelsea councils were reached out to for comment but did not reply before the deadline.
Featured Image credit: Aedrian Salazar on Unsplash
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