The youth worker who helps a shy teenager find their voice in a drama group.
The community centre that gives kids a place to go after school.
The outdoor expedition that sparks a lifelong love of the environment.

Youth work changes lives and makes a real difference in communities across the UK.

It gives young people a place to belong, build skills, and believe in themselves. By providing safe spaces to connect, it lowers their chances of ending up involved in crime or anti-social behaviour, and improves their chances of being involved in education or employment.

But over the last decade, we’ve seen too many youth centres close their doors and youth workers leave the sector. 

With the Government set to publish a National Youth Strategy later this year, it’s time for a bold, long-term vision for youth work.

Today, Liberal Democrat members have passed new policy to back youth work and put it at the heart of building stronger communities, calling on the Government to:

• Appoint a dedicated Cabinet Minister for Children and Young People.
   
• Commit to a fair, long-term funding settlement to support youth work, resources and infrastructure.
   
• Support charity-run youth services to access more funding and share best practice.
   
• Clarify and fund the statutory duty for local authorities to provide “sufficient” youth services.
   
• Develop a comprehensive Workforce and Training Strategy to ensure a strong pipeline of skilled youth workers.
   
• Ensure youth voices shape all policy development by introducing a statutory duty for Local Authority Youth Councils
   
• Strengthen partnerships between youth services, schools, employers, mental health professionals, and outdoor education providers.
   
• Support schools and youth organisations to deliver outdoor education, aiming for every young person to have at least one such experience in primary and one in secondary school.

Youth work isn’t just one of the most effective ways we have to improve a young person’s life chances, it is also a significantly important investment. Research shows that every £1 spent on youth work generates £6.40 in returns, by reducing pressure on public services and delivering lasting benefits for society

The Government has a golden opportunity with its forthcoming National Youth Strategy. But opportunity means nothing without action. 

Liberal Democrats will keep fighting to make sure every young person, no matter their background, has access to the opportunities, support and safe spaces they deserve.

Because when we back youth work, we back stronger communities, brighter futures, and a fairer society.

The challenges facing policing in Britain have never been more complex, yet the system is stuck in the past and at crisis point.

Years of the Conservatives ineffective resourcing and mismanagement of our policing service have left communities feeling abandoned in the face of crime and anti-social behaviour.

That, coupled with huge court backlogs, denying victims justice, undermining public confidence and allowing too many criminals to get away with it, means trust between the police and the public has been eroded.

We believe Britain deserves better – a modern, joined-up policing system that prevents crime, delivers justice swiftly, and restores public confidence. That means smarter use of technology, proper investment in people, and targeted action to keep every community safe.

Today, Liberal Democrat members have passed new policy to make policing fit for the future:

• Join up policing and the wider justice system with secure data sharing.
   
• Tackle court backlogs, reduce reoffending, and prioritise crime prevention.
   
• Improve responses to violence against women and girls with sustainable funding, better training, and high-quality perpetrator programmes.
   
• Embed rural crime teams or specialists in every police force, expand community police counters, and enforce tougher penalties for rural offences.
   
• Equip police forces with the technology they need to prevent and solve crime through better coordination, procurement, and recruitment.
   
• Introduce mandatory national vetting standards for officers and publish regular data on those under investigation to rebuild public trust.

Strong, effective policing isn’t just about more officers, it’s about giving them the tools, training, and support they need to do the job. That means mental health support for officers, smarter use of technology with proper safeguards, and closer work with schools, youth services, and communities to stop crime before it starts.

Liberal Democrats will put public safety first, with a policing system that’s fair and fit for the 21st century. Because everyone, no matter where they live, deserves to feel safe in their own home and walking down their own street.

Right now, 90,000 men, women and children are stuck in the UK’s asylum backlog. Most have been waiting over six months just for the Home Office to make an initial decision on their asylum application. 28,000 have been waiting more than a year.

People who came to the UK seeking safety – fleeing war, persecution and unimaginable trauma – now find themselves trapped in a cruel Home Office limbo, banned from working or renting a home, living in unsuitable accommodation, unable to move on with their lives.

Now, with protests outside asylum hotels over the summer reaching new heights, many are also living in fear of violence and intimidation. 

The former Conservative government deliberately created this humanitarian crisis by telling the Home Office to stop processing claims, causing the backlog to grow and grow. They claimed it would act as a deterrent to stop people coming here – but of course it didn’t.

Labour has so far failed to get a grip of the crisis. At the current rate of people claiming asylum and the Home Office deciding cases, it would take five years to clear this backlog. 

The Liberal Democrats are not willing to stand by and let this continue. We urgently need to deal with this backlog, so people are not trapped in limbo and refugees can get on with their lives in the UK.

That’s why we are calling on the government to declare the asylum backlog a national emergency and set up Nightingale processing centres – like the Nightingale hospitals we saw during the pandemic – to clear the asylum backlog within six months.

These centres should be independent from the Home Office – part of a dedicated new unit to take over processing asylum claims. The Home Office has shown, time and again, that it is not fit for this job. Decisions are wrong the first time far too often, leading to appeals and causing costly delays.

By creating a new unit and staffing it with double the number of caseworkers, we can clear the backlog in six months and restore some humanity to the system.

Until the Government treats this crisis with the urgency and seriousness it demands, nothing will change and the vulnerable people caught in the system will continue to suffer.

Image: Steve Cadman, CC BY-SA 2.0