Закрытие клубов для молодежи в Бристоле привело к росту преступности и падению успеваемости

Radio 4 documentary explores the high price communities pay for lost youth clubs For every £1 saved in cuts means £3 spent in other social costs Communities without youth clubs see higher youth crime and lower GCSE results, a new documentary made in Bristol will reveal this coming week. And areas which saw new youth clubs open or reopen saw lower crime rates and better exam results, research has revealed. The Return of the Youth Club, which is being aired on Radio 4 later this week, features the only youth club left in the Barton Hill area of Bristol, and was made by local documentary-maker Neil Maggs, about the impact of the austerity cuts between 2010 and 2024 on local councils and youth work. In powerful testimony in the documentary, young people in Barton Hill explain how they feel relief at coming to youth club and regard it as a safe space that is not school, or home, or the potentially dangerous streets, but somewhere they can be themselves. And the impact on young people and communities when youth clubs close is huge, according to Dr Carmen Villa, from the University of Zurich, and a researcher at the Institute of Fiscal Studies. She shared her remarkable research in the documentary, which she said surprised even her. She analysed the statistics around crime rates, youth offending, exam results and educational performance for the entire decade from 2010 to 2019 - a period which saw more than 1,000 youth clubs close down, and the Conservative Government cut money to local authorities so much that they then had to reduce spending on youth work and youth clubs by 76 per cent. She analysed individual areas of London over that period, and found a noticeable difference in communities which kept youth clubs, and those where they closed - even taking account of the different socio-economics of each area. “What I found was that after closures, test scores in GCSE exams dropped by four per cent - that’s the equivalent of about half a grade,” she told Neil Maggs. “In terms of crime the effects were even larger. Young people in areas affected became more likely to commit crime by 14 per cent. This explains an additional about 1,600 offenders in the 2010-2019 decade in London,” she added. Her research revealed that cutting youth services was a false economy in the 2010s, because the taxpayer had to pay more in other areas. “What I found is that for every pound that was saved by closing youth clubs, there were social costs of almost £3,” she said. “Where youth clubs opened, compared to areas of similar socio-economic characteristics, young people seemed to be less likely to become involved in crime and performed better in the GCSE exams. “It really seems to be about having this provision, in a way that cannot be replaced by libraries, by parks or by sports centres. Youth centres seem to be quite unique in what they provide young people. “It does seem that adolescence is a very important period, and that investing in teenagers can have returns just as big as investing in early childhood - I think that is what surprised me the most,” she added. The documentary explores the last surviving youth club in Barton Hill, as well as the kind of large-scale youth organisations that took over from local councils when funding was cut. The documentary also hears from Mark Coates, the chief exec from the Bristol-based Creative Youth Network. The Return of the Youth Club is broadcast on Radio 4 on Sunday, September 6 and 1.30pm, and again on Monday, September 7 at 4pm, and BBC Sounds after that.