Youth Service campaigners to consider legal action.
Campaigners against proposed cuts to Devon County Council’s youth service have said they are considering legal action as they believe the authority may have violated international law.
The dispute came to a head last Thursday when 17-year-old campaigner Alfie Weaver was denied a chance to address the council at a meeting to set the council’s budget for 2014/15.
The budget included a reduction of nearly £1m to the council’s youth service which could potentially see the closure of the council’s youth centres after the completion of a consultation process.
Campaigners claim that by denying Mr Weaver a chance to speak the council was in breach of Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which reads: “When adults are making decisions that affect children, children have the right to say what they think should happen and have their opinions taken into account.”
George Downs a 16 year-old member of Youth Parliament and spokesman for the campaign group said: "At the moment we are looking into legal avenues, there was a case of the local authority in North Somerset being prosecuted because of its processes during its youth review a few years ago but we haven’t decided on anything yet."
However the authority has denied any illegal action stating that the campaigners had not followed proper procedures for speaking at the meeting were made aware of this before attending.
A spokesman for Devon County Council said: “The action of the Council was entirely proper and lawful.
“The young people had missed the deadline to submit written questions to the Full Council, and they were aware the week before the meeting that there was no opportunity for them to be allowed automatically to speak at the meeting.
“However, Councillors on the day asked to suspend its Standing Orders to allow a representative of the young people to speak at the meeting. In line with normal procedures, the Council was asked to vote on whether or not it would allow that request, and did so, but a majority of members did not agree with that suggestion, by 32 to 23 votes.”
The council has also stressed that no decision has yet been made on the future of the council’s youth service which lie at the centre of the dispute, as a consultation process was ongoing.
Cabinent member with responsibility for the Devon Youth Service, Will Mumford said: “I actually met with a group of the young people before the council meeting and they were completely aware that they were not allowed to speak at the council meeting because they had not met the time limit for submission of a question.
“They had been told that before they even came down to county hall so it came as no surprise so I think that one has to be cautious with the degree of outrage which they are professing.
“The way the council is run, we have numerous decisions and we can’t constantly break standing orders to take yet another discussion from the floor.
“The council meeting the other day went on for many, many hours and that’s the reason for having some degree of structure and form.
“I hope that most people who are engaging in the consultation process are taking a positive view and they’re engaging on behalf of the organisations to see how they can provide those services or a similar range of services locally.
“There are many communities and organisations around the county who are chomping at the bit to get involved and to deliver this or to support the service on a different footing, going into the future.
“There are those who are objecting to it as a point of principle and we will listen to their recommendations and their comments.”
Cllr Mumford also said that he’d also previously invited the Devon Youth Parliament to meet to discuss the proposals, but his offer has not yet been taken up.
“If the Youth Parliament want to meet me, or Alfie Weaver who is setting up an activist group in Sidmouth is keen to meet me that’s fine I’m happy to meet with them but we have to be realistic about it; they have to come back with some proposals.
“I’d much rather they took the view that their energy was best expended in trying to provide a solution rather than just complain about the proposed changes.
“Let’s try and view this as a potential positive way forward as a whole host of people are already doing.”
However George Downs, a 16-year-old MYP for East and Mid-Devon, who is among those leading the campaign says that invitations for involvement have not been forthcoming.
He said: “There was a proposal to meet on Thursday with the youth campaigners who were there and there was a meeting between Will Mumford and youth campaigners however none of the information from that, which the young people expressed, has been passed on to the councillors .
“Prior to that time the Youth Parliament didn’t receive an offer to meet with Will Mumford, it was on Thursday when there was an offer was given to Mel Beer, the member for North Western Torridge. I’ll have to check but the offer was to her specifically.
He continued :"We haven’t been contacted as a full youth parliament, we asked if we could scrutinise the review of the youth service and that was rejected by the cabinet they said they had their own people’s scrutiny group which is made up county councillors rather than stakeholders and young people who would be affected by that.
"Partly that’s the reason we feel they’ve broken article 12 but also on Thursday they were voting to pass the budget and by not letting young people, some who had travelled from further than Barnstaple to come down and we feel that by not letting them speak, that was not allowing young people to have a say in decisions that affect them.
"At the moment we are looking into legal avenues, there was a case of the local authority in North Somerset being prosecuted because of its processes during its youth review a few years ago but we haven’t decided on anything yet.
"There was a time during the webcast online where the recording went silent when the young people were leaving the chamber so we are seeing if that was deliberate or a technical failing and after that we’ll have a picture of whether or not we should a legal route."
A previous legal challenge to cuts in youth services in North Somerset was dismissed by a High Court judge in 2012.
The action was brought on behalf of Aaron Hunt, a teenager with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder from Banwell, who had claimed the council had breached the Equality Act.
Mr Downs also spoke of scepticism over the council’s consultation process but confirmed that the opposition group would be encouraging people to come forward and have their say.
He said: “We will be encouraging young people and other community members to take part in that official consultation but we are also encouraging them to take part in action outside of that because it seems to us that because the budget has already been passed it feels as if the consultation isn’t going to be worth anything.
“There are many opposition councillors that believe having a consultation at this time is only a box-ticking exercise and is just going through the legal motions of what the council has to do.
“But we will be encouraging young people to participate in that and take advantage of that opportunity, even if a limited and not entirely open opportunity, for young people to have a say.
“As for the consultation process that happened in the autumn,we believe that was rushed as well.
“I’ve spoken to Exmouth town councillors including conservative councillors and they agree with me that the consultation process prior to the start of 2014 was rushed and some could argue that it wasn’t entirely honest to young people in the way that they conducted that.
“Obviously if the council run youth service is shut down and all the council run youth centres close we will have to start looking to build a voluntary network, even if that would be swimming against the tide.
“But we believe that the professionally trained youth workers who run the open access sessions are too valuable to replace with voluntary youth workers who may not have the safe-guarding training and the professionalism to deal with young people on a daily basis.
“We will start looking at a voluntary youth service if it comes to the end of the review and the deal is done until then we feel like we could make an impact to stop the council run youth service from being shut down.”
Consultation on the youth service is still ongoing.
