The Children's and Culture Scrutiny Committee was scheduled to meet on Friday, 25 July 2025, to discuss the performance of the library service, the Lincolnshire Youth Justice Plan 2025-28, and the Holiday Activities and Food Programme annual report. The committee was also expected to review and comment on its work programme.

Lincolnshire Youth Justice Plan 2025-28

The committee was invited to review the Lincolnshire Youth Justice Plan 2025-28, prior to its consideration by the Executive on 2 September 2025, and approval by the County Council on 12 September 2025. The Youth Justice Plan is required to secure annual youth justice grant funding and ensure compliance with the statutory delivery of services.

The plan includes:

• An overview of the demographics of the youth justice cohort
• Analysis of annual data
• The financial framework and associated resources
• Measurement of outcomes and impact of actions from the previous year
• Identification of any risks and challenges
• Priorities and actions for the forthcoming year

The primary focus of the Youth Justice Service is to prevent and reduce offending behaviour in children aged up to 18 years. Performance is measured against three national indicators: the number of first time entrants into the youth justice system, the number of children who re-offend after their first offence, and the number of children who receive a custodial sentence.

The plan also details planned activity for the year, including:

• Developing practice and interventions based on local and national themes/trends, enhancing access to prevention and diversion pathways.
• Prioritising the interests of children and recognising their needs, rights and potential; promoting individual strengths and capacity; encouraging active participation, engagement and wider social inclusion; promoting a childhood removed from the justice system
• Analysing workforce development needs via quality assurance activity, promoting resilience and wellbeing for all staff, devising and implementing an effective and meaningful training and development plan.
• Planning for ongoing improvement linked to relevant action plans including national thematic resources, serious incident reviews, learning from relevant partnership work including Lincolnshire Safeguarding Children Partnership and the Safer Lincolnshire Partnership together with the Youth Justice Board Standards for Children.

The Youth Justice Plan states that Future4Me, Lincolnshire County Council's youth offending service, aims to ensure that children are fully supported to change challenging harmful behaviours, to realise their potential and to make a positive contribution to their communities.

Holiday Activities and Food Programme Annual Report 2024-25

The committee was scheduled to review and comment on the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Programme Annual Report 2024-25.

The HAF programme supports children and young people in receipt of benefits-related free school meals through holiday periods. The programme is designed to ensure a high-quality experience for children that will result in receiving healthy and nutritious meals and maintaining a healthy level of physical activity.

A mapping exercise of available holiday provision in Lincolnshire for 2024-25 showed good coverage of provision across Lincolnshire, and a diverse market of providers offering varied activities.

During the summer of 2024, 75 approved providers delivered the HAF programme, enabling HAF provision in 128 venues across Lincolnshire.

In 2024, Lincolnshire Young Inspectors visited eight HAF providers and reported that sessions observed were delivered professionally and positively.

The report also included recommendations for the 2025/26 Lincolnshire HAF Programme, including that SEND and secondary-specific provision continues to be a key area for development in Lincolnshire.

Performance of Library Service Contract - Year 9

The committee was scheduled to receive an update on the performance of the statutory library service, which is outsourced to Greenwich Leisure Ltd (GLL). The report provided contract performance information to enable the committee to scrutinise performance of the final year of the outsourced Library contract to GLL. The Library Service contract with GLL commenced April 2016 for an initial five-year period with an option to extend for a further five-year period, which has been granted, taking the contract to 31 March 2026.

The report noted that Year 9 saw continued growth of the core, mobile and digital library service with visits increasing by 7% and stock issues by 3% year on year giving an annual total of 1.1 million visits and 2.3 million issues.

The report also detailed a number of initiatives, including:

• The Reading Agency's 2024 national Summer Reading Challenge (SRC), which had over 3,500 children participating.
• A World Book Day Costume Swap and Create project, where core libraries held costume swaps in the four weeks running up to World Book Day on 6 March 2025.
• A partnership with Waterstones to deliver their first ever Children's Book Festival at Lincoln Central Library.
• The introduction of Bra Banks to 11 core libraries in November 2024, in partnership with the LCC Waste Services Team and the national charity Against Breast Cancer.

The report also provided an update on Community Hubs, noting that GLL provided support to 36 Community Hubs between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025.

The report stated that all 2024/25 Key Performance Indicators were met and in certain cases significantly exceeded. The service has built on year-on-year growth in visits and issues.

The report also noted that between April 2024 and March 2025, the core and mobile libraries in Lincolnshire generated £25,415,711 in social value.

Children's and Culture Scrutiny Committee Work Programme

The committee was scheduled to consider the contents of its work programme to ensure that its scrutiny activity is focused where it can be of greatest benefit.