Decision

Council agreed the amendment in the names of Cllrs Chanté Johnson and Miriam Mirwitch.

Council agreed the following amended substantive motion.

This Council notes:

1. Waltham Forest has invested significantly in opportunities for children and young people, including our Family Hubs, Space4All, which invests £200,000 a year in more than 25 free youth sessions a week, reaching around 700 young people with support including mentoring, CV writing and interview preparation, and Together We Play which is improving to improve play equipment and infrastructure while supporting community-led projects.
2. Despite more than a decade of national cuts, Waltham Forest’s investment in youth services remains among the highest in the country, and the borough’s careers service already provides careers guidance and support to young people.
3. Waltham Forest’s Green administration has secured around £1 million from the national Labour government to run a Young Futures Hub until 2029, bringing together employment, education, mental health and wellbeing, youth and community safety partners. The Council also commissions specialist support for young people at risk of disengaging: since November 2025, 54 young people have been supported and 21 have moved into education, employment or training. This sits alongside a strong local network including Project Zero, the King’s Trust, Shaw Trust, Waltham Forest College and Big Creative Education.
4. Successive national governments have failed young people. Council spending on youth services in England has been cut by 76% in real terms by Conservative governments since 2010–11, a fall of £1.3 billion; tuition fees were introduced in 1998 and have risen repeatedly, from £1,000 to £3,000, then £9,000, and now £9,790, with further rises planned; the Education Maintenance Allowance was abolished by the Conservative Government in England in 2011; and frequent changes of Education Secretary have left education and skills policy without long-term direction.
5. Youth work is a skilled profession in high demand, yet the average youth worker earns around £21,000, about a quarter of youth work jobs pay below the National Living Wage, and some 4,500 practitioners have left the sector since 2021. As with teaching, national governments have failed to invest in the education and training workforce that young people rely on, and too few youth workers can afford to live in London while doing the job.
6. One in eight young people are currently not in education, employment or training "Successive changes to benefits have created an increasingly uneven and confusing system for young people, with recent reforms further reducing support, including the halving of the Universal Credit health element for most new claimants from April 2026. Being out of education, employment or training for long periods can have a significant and lasting impact on mental and physical wellbeing, reducing life chances and lowering earnings long after a young person leaves education, employment or training.
7. Educational attainment alone does not protect young people from, being out of education, employment or training,  with nearly 30% of those young people now achieving good GCSEs or equivalent qualifications. This demonstrates the importance of helping young people develop experience, confidence, practical skills and connections alongside academic qualifications, and shows that the barriers are often structural – fewer entry-level jobs, complicated recruitment and age discrimination by employers – rather than a lack of effort by young people.
8. The Government-commissioned Milburn Review found that 84% of young people not in education, employment or training want a job, education or training opportunity; that one in ten employers admitted rejecting a young person solely because of their age; and that youth unemployment is a whole-system challenge, not a lack of aspiration among young people.
9. Young people with SEND face particularly significant barriers to entering and remaining in education, employment or training, with young people with SEND 80% more likely to be out of education, employment or training than average, and having had an Education, Health and Care Plan at school the single strongest predictor of being out of education, employment or training at 17 to 19. Waltham Forest performs better than the national average for participation among young people with an EHCP, but there is more to do, and proposed national SEND reforms risk weakening the legal entitlements on which many of these young people depend.
10. Care-experienced young people also face significant barriers when making the transition into adulthood and employment, with those aged 19 to 21 nearly three times more likely to be NEET out of education, employment or training than their peers.
11. Young refugees and people seeking asylum, including unaccompanied children who go on to become care leavers, face additional barriers, including interrupted education, language, trauma, insecure immigration status and, for those seeking asylum, rules that prevent most of them from working.
12. Young people’s wellbeing and their access to work and training are closely linked, and long waits for CAMHS leave schools and colleges supporting distressed young people without specialist help. Wellbeing support should sit alongside real opportunities, not replace them, and must never be used to label young people or to justify withdrawing their benefits.
13. The Labour-Led Council previously introduced targeted support for care-experienced young people, including treating care experience as a protected characteristic, guaranteeing interviews for suitably qualified care-experienced applicants for Council jobs, ring-fencing apprenticeships for care leavers and providing 100% Council Tax relief. Care leavers also have dedicated education, employment and training advisers, Council apprenticeships and employability programmes, and this administration is proud to continue that commitment.
14. The Mayor's £30 million Youth Lates programme, funded from the City Hall budget, provides funding to each borough for late-night youth provision. This is welcome and we recognise it cannot on its own replace the 81 youth centres lost across London between 2010 and 2024 under Conservative Governments, and its long-term funding has not been set out. The Government’s Jobs Guarantee will support eligible young people on Universal Credit however is limited to 18 to 21 year olds who have already been out of work for 18 months, and is backed by the withdrawal of benefits from those who decline a placement.

This Council believes that:

1. Every young person in Waltham Forest should be able to feel confident about their future and to have the people, places and opportunities they need to fulfil their potential.
2. Young people are not the problem. The barriers facing young people seeking work or training reflect national choices to cut youth services, education funding and careers advice while entry-level work has become scarcer and less secure, compounded by Covid, the cost-of-living crisis and high rates of loneliness among young people.
3. Becoming disconnected from education, work or training is rarely a single moment but the result of barriers that build up over time. Support should start early, before young people leave education; be voluntary, judgement-free and built on trusted relationships with youth workers and careers advisers; and lead to good work that is secure, pays at least the London Living Wage and has real prospects. Paid work experience, mentoring, apprenticeships and employer engagement are essential, and exploitative placements have no place in that offer.
4. Youth workers, like teachers, are essential to young people’s futures and should be paid enough to live in the communities they serve.
5. Young people with SEND, care-experienced young people, young refugees and people seeking asylum, and young carers require particular focus, recognising the significantly greater barriers these groups can face when making the transition from education into employment and the importance of sustained, individually appropriate support co-produced with young people themselves.
6. Too much effective local provision relies on short-term external funding. Young people need long-term certainty, not a succession of time-limited national schemes.
7. Young people should be at the heart of the green transition. Retrofit, renewable energy, nature recovery, sustainable transport, care, and the creative industries offer meaningful, local and lasting careers, and our skills system should be built around them.

This Council resolves to:

1. Support all young people into education, employment and training, with particular focus on those facing additional barriers including young people with SEND, care-experienced young people, young refugees and people seeking asylum, young carers, and those who are experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage, through inclusive, co-produced opportunities and targeted support, valuing every route into work including apprenticeships, volunteering and creative and community work.

1. Launch a Youth Opportunity Charter, and borough-wide Skills and Jobs Partnership, co-produced with young people, bringing together employers, colleges, training providers, and the voluntary and community sector. It will create clear pathways into employment, apprenticeships, training and growth sectors such as green jobs, care and the creative industries for every young person who wants them. The Charter will set out what every young person in Waltham Forest can expect, including commitments from employers to fair standards such as paying at least the London Living Wage regardless of age, providing paid rather than unpaid work experience and internships where appropriate, age-inclusive recruitment practices, and guaranteed interviews for young people facing the greatest barriers. The Council will lead by example as an employer, use its procurement and social value requirements to secure apprenticeships and paid placements, and support young people to shape their own futures by backing them with practical resources and opportunities. The Partnership will aim to secure the support of at least 100 employers and create at least 1,000new apprenticeship, internship, work experience and paid placement opportunities in the borough for young people by 2030.

1. Strengthen and connect the borough’s careers service, the DWP Youth Hub, the Young Futures Hub, Space4All and voluntary sector partners into a single, easy-to-navigate, judgement-free offer, with mobile outreach to youth groups, estates and community spaces, to proactively engage 16 to 18-year-olds in education and 16 to 24-year-olds who are currently not in education, employment or training. The offer will provide careers guidance, CV and interview support, practical employability skills and workplace preparation, connect young people directly with local employers and opportunities, and guarantee every young person access to a careers guidance session, with the aim of engaging at least 500 young people each year through the integrated service and supporting at least 50% of participants into education, employment, apprenticeships or training.

1. Continue and build on the Council’s support for care-experienced young people, and explore extending guaranteed interviews and ring-fenced apprenticeships to young refugees with leave to remain.
2. Ensure youth workers employed or commissioned by the Council are paid at least the London Living Wage, and work with partners to develop a local youth work career pathway, including apprenticeships and training for young people from the borough.
3. Report annually to Overview and Scrutiny on progress, with data on young people not in education, employment or training and those whose activity is not known, broken down by ward, SEND, care experience, ethnicity and other characteristics, and with young people involved in reviewing it.
4. Ask the Leader to write to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) calling on the Government to: (a) give councils and local partners long-term funding certainty for youth and employment programmes; (b) put youth services on a statutory, properly funded footing, with a national youth workforce strategy that pays youth workers fairly; (c) open the Youth Guarantee to all 16 to 24 year olds from day one and remove benefit sanctions from it.
5. Ask the Leader to write to the Mayor of London calling for: (a) sustained, multi-year funding for the London Youth Games, so that young people from every borough, including those facing the greatest barriers, can take part in Europe’s largest youth sports festival free of cost, and benefit from the volunteering and leadership opportunities it offers; and (b) sustained long-term funding certainty for the Mayor’s Youth Lates programme, so that City Hall’s support for young people is sustained rather than year to year.