In the late 1990’s and early part of the new Millennium Brighton was regularly referred to as having more pilots than Gatwick, because the Blair Government used to test out its policies in a city which was close enough to London to be accessible by Ministers, managed by a Labour Council (so therefore strengthening the votes) and small enough that a modest investment could make a big difference. It is always a bad thing to put all or most of your eggs in one basket. However at least with the Brighton pilots, the good schemes were then rolled out nationally. The current Government is taking resources and rather than piloting them, is applying them in one or two areas and then walking away. This news report refers to a sum of £19m which has been transferred to Sheffield City Council from the Government to fund youth provision. It is part of phase two of the Life Chances Fund which was first launched in July 2016. The fund is intended to support projects working across six themes, of which the second round – focusing on early years and young people – opened to expressions of interest in January 2017. The total allocated to this round of funding is £28m and the first round distributed £16.2m. The balance of the funding (£35.8m) will focus on healthy lives and older people’s services and is set to be announced later in the year.

I am thrilled that such a large sum of money has been made available to help fund youth projects, however to put 23% of the overall funding into one project in one city seems to be very concerning. One wonders how many other places submitted bids, spending time and peoples wages on an exercise which was sadly without a positive outcome. It would be fantastic if the Government then announced it was going to treat these schemes as pilot schemes and roll out the successes nationally. Sadly this is not going to occur. Indeed the money in any case comes from the National Lottery funds!