• MY work as a Green London Assembly Member has shown that across London, councils have cut over £30million from annual budgets for youth services in recent years.

In Camden we have so far lost £1.3million per year compared with 2011, with more cuts planned, while the council has been pushing these services out to the voluntary sector.

The awful violence in Camden last week is a tragic endorsement of warnings by community activists of the growing risk of knife crime.

They have been concerned for a long time about young people around Queen’s Crescent, which has lost its youth Connexions office and its local police post.

A year ago the Mayor of London told me it wasn’t his job to plug the gaps left by government cuts in council youth services.

But with campaigners I pressed on, gathered the evidence, and now we’ve won real new funds going into projects that will help repair some of the damage caused by these cuts. I’m very pleased to have worked on this issue and convinced Sadiq Khan to change his mind.

The new £45million three-year fund in the mayor’s budget this month will make a difference to many young lives in London.

In City Hall last week, he told me that anyone with plans can start getting in touch with his team now, and I hope that organisations in Camden that have lost funding or have new ideas will apply as soon as they can.

CLLR SIAN BERRY AM
Green Party, Highgate ward