DCMS Youth Team Newsletter – August 2025

Contents:

  1. Introduction
  2. Major Announcements
  3. NCS Closure and Legacy
  4. UK Youth Parliament Annual Conference
  5. The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Funding
  6. Research and Evaluation
  7. Other Announcements

1. Introduction

Welcome to the latest edition of DCMS Youth Team Newsletter. This covers the latest major funding announcements, an update on NCS closure, the UKYP Annual Conference, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, research and evaluation, and other announcements.

2. Major Announcements

Today the Prime Minister announced an £88 million package for a major expansion of youth services and in-person opportunities to re-connect young people with their communities and the world around them. This investment will provide support to youth clubs and schools to offer more after-school activities and enable organisations like the Scouts and Guides to deliver more places in local communities.

The package of announcements includes;

  • £22.5 million over three years to create a tailored enrichment offer in up to 400 schools. This will give pupils access to extra-curricular activities such as art and music, outdoor activities, sport, debating or volunteering that support wellbeing and essential skills around the school day.

  • The launch of the Better Youth Spaces programme, a £30.5 million fund to improve youth club infrastructure in areas with the highest levels of child poverty. This will go towards smaller capital projects such as new gym equipment and climbing walls. Programme details available here.

  • The rollout of the Local Youth Transformation pilot, an £8 million programme to support local authorities to deliver a high-quality out-of-school offer. It will provide the tools, guidance and funding, to assess, improve, and invest in impactful local youth offers. You can find more information about the pilot on gov.uk.

  • The third phase of the Million Hours Fund, a £19 million joint investment with The National Lottery Community Fund to deliver over a million additional hours of youth work in areas with high rates of anti-social behaviour. To find out more and to apply visit the National Lottery Community Fund website.

  • £7.5 million for the Uniformed Youth Fund, creating thousands of new places in youth organisations like The Scouts, Guides and Volunteer Police Cadets in areas of unmet demand.

Today’s investment is the latest step towards the government’s National Youth Strategy which will be shaped by insights from over 20,000 young people engaged through the ‘Deliver You’ campaign. It will set out a long-term vision for youth policy across government and put young people at the heart of decision making. The insights from young people will be captured in a report, Today’s Youth Tomorrow’s Nation and is due to be published alongside the Strategy in the Autumn.

It also builds on wider action through the Plan for Change to back young people’s futures, including by extending voting rights to 16 and 17-year-olds, announcing the £500 million Better Futures Fund for young people’s support services, and launching new guidance to protect young people from online harms. There are other investments being made this year, including for social action, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (see more details below), and the Adventures Away from Home fund.

The announcement was accompanied by a visit to Milton Keynes Music Service Holiday Activity Fund Programme by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Here they met with members of the National Youth Strategy Youth Advisory Group.

3. NCS Closure and Legacy

The National Citizen Service programme delivery ceased on 31 March 2025 and the National Citizen Service Trust closed on 11 July 2025. NCS delivered almost one and a half million experiences to young people, and through NCS, young people completed more than 18 million hours of volunteering and social action. An archived version of the NCS Trust website, which includes their published research, is available on the UK Government web archive. The DCMS youth team is working to ensure a clear legacy of the NCS programme so please get in touch if you have questions or suggestions, and there is guidance on who to contact on gov.uk.

4. UK Youth Parliament Annual Conference

Congratulations to the UK Youth Parliament on another fantastic annual conference! Taking place at the University of Sussex on 25-27 July, this year’s event was attended by 169 Members of Youth Parliament (MYPs) from across the UK, along with 99 regional and local support workers, and eight members of the UKYP Programme Committee.

Kicking off with a welcome message from Minister Peacock, MYPs heard from and worked with a range of special guests, including Mims Davies MP, Peter Lamb MP and Dr Lauren Sullivan MP. For much of the weekend, they worked in thematic committees to research, deliberate and draw conclusions on key issues from the UKYP Manifesto. Their committee reports will inform the debates at the House of Commons sitting in November 2025. Thank you to everyone involved in organising this important event, especially the NYA.

5. The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Funding

We are pleased to announce that there will be additional funding to deliver the Duke of Edinburgh award in Additional Needs and Alternative Provision settings in FY25/26.

State funded Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) schools, Alternative Provision (AP), or Pupil Referral Units (PRU) in England can access up to £4,500 for equipment, a 75% contribution to licence fees, and funded participation places to support young people with additional needs to unlock their potential through a life-changing DofE programme. Deadline for applications: 11 December 2025. Find out more here.

6. Research and Evaluation

The Barriers and Enablers to Participation in Youth Activities report explores why some young people do not participate in youth activities, and what barriers and enablers explain why. The research also explores the effect of a range of personal characteristics (e.g. age, gender and ethnicity) on patterns of participation. You can read the report here.

Evidence review considering how DCMS contributes to the Opportunity Mission

The ‘Break Down Barriers to Opportunity’ (the Opportunity Mission) is one of five core missions of the UK government. DCMS plays a key role in the Opportunity Mission given its responsibility for: culture and the creative industries; sport and physical activity; out-of-school youth services; the youth workforce; and local authorities’ statutory duty for youth services. DCMS commissioned Ipsos to identify how policies and programmes in DCMS’s sectors support the mission and developed a Theory of Change to understand these mechanisms. The report is available here.

7. Other Announcements

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government are running a series of webinars over the summer to get feedback from local authorities and other interested parties on the proposed metrics for the 15 priority outcomes set out in the Local Government Outcomes Framework. One of the consultation questions is whether to include a youth services metric and what it should be.  You are welcome to input into this engagement process by signing up to the webinars and / or filling in the feedback form which is open until mid September.

Contact us: youth@dcms.gov.uk          

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