A New Young Futures Hub for Blackpool
I'm delighted that Blackpool has been selected as the home of one of the government’s new Young Futures Hubs.
It's one of 26 new hubs being established across England and for a town like ours, where too many young people have grown up watching the places they used to go disappear, it matters enormously. This is real investment aimed squarely at the young people who need it most.
The idea is simple, and it's the one young people themselves have asked for – somewhere to go, something to do and someone to talk to.
The hub will be open to young people aged 10 to 18, and up to 25 for those with special educational needs and disabilities. Alongside open-access sport, creative activities and trusted youth workers, it will connect young people directly with mental health support, skills and training, routes into employment and crime prevention services.
At the moment, a young person struggling with their mental health, falling out of education, or being pulled towards trouble often has to navigate several different services, if they manage to access them at all. A Young Futures Hub puts that support in one place, with trusted adults who know them.
Blackpool Council will also receive support through the Local Youth Transformation programme, which is designed to strengthen leadership, train the youth work workforce and build lasting partnerships between local organisations.
Between 2010/11 and 2022/23, local government spending on youth services across the country fell by 73 per cent. More than 1,000 youth centres closed and over 4,500 youth worker roles were lost. That was a choice made by previous government while young people in towns like ours paid for it.
When this Labour government ran its State of the Nation survey, working with 14,000 young people, the findings were bleak but unsurprising. Many young people have been left without access to safe, supportive environments or a community to belong to and reliance on online interaction has grown in the absence of face-to-face opportunities. Young people didn't stop needing somewhere to go. They just stopped being offered it.
The new hubs form part of the government's National Youth Strategy, Youth Matters, launched by Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy in December 2025 and co-produced with those 14,000 young people.
With young people and mentors behind Creative Fusion - the country’s first youth-led Local Cultural Education Partnership. This is just one brilliant youth initiative in Blackpool.
The strategy sets out an ambition to rebuild youth services over the next decade, backed by over £500 million of government investment, while putting power back in the hands of local communities and giving young people a genuine role in designing the services built around them.
Pilot hubs have been running in a handful of locations including Manchester, and Blackpool now joins 25 other local authorities in this next wave. The evidence from those early hubs is encouraging. One young person using the Manchester hub, Daniel, said simply that it had helped his confidence and supported him into college.
The government is putting its money where its mouth is and investing £70 million between 2026/27 and 2028/29 to establish Young Futures Hubs and deliver Local Youth Transformation projects. For Blackpool that means up to £500,000 to deliver Local Youth Transformation projects. Up to £125,000 in capital funding for each hub, for refurbishment and digital projects, and up to £300,000 per year for each hub to operate.
The programme is supported across government by the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Education, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice – exactly the kind of joined-up working that has been missing.
Over the coming months I'll be working with Blackpool Council and with local youth organisations to make sure the hub delivers properly for young people here, and that it builds on the brilliant work already being done across our town rather than duplicating it.
Most importantly, I want young people in Blackpool to have a real say in how it develops. The national strategy was co-produced with 14,000 young people and the Blackpool hub should be shaped by them here. I’ll be sharing details of how you can get involved.
