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xUK Youth Parliament threatened with closure
Date: 28th September 2026
Category:
General measures of implementation
Reports concerning the potential closure of the UK Youth Parliament have circulated in recent weeks, after the UK Government declined to confirm whether funding for the parliament would continue beyond next year.
Though no final decision has been made, a government source revealed that the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) does not intend to provide grants to the UK Youth Parliament, in its current form, beyond March 2027. This comes after a UK Government review published in October 2025, which found that the parliament was delivering on its intended goals, but only 25% of young people were aware of its existence, and reported that some schools felt “excluded from the process”.
Speaking to the BBC, a DCMS spokesperson acknowledged the UK Youth Parliament’s “important legacy” and praised it as a “national platform to represent their peers, engage with decision-makers and develop confidence, leadership and skills for life and work”. The UK Government has said that while funding for the parliament in its current form may cease, it is working with young people and youth organisations to create a “new initiative” that will facilitate their increased involvement in democracy and decision-making, with a particular focus on under-represented groups. Further details on this scheme are expected to come this autumn.
Previous moves to close youth parliaments have been met with criticism from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. For example, the closure of Funky Dragon (Welsh Youth Parliament) in 2014, was followed by the UN Committee criticism of the lack of youth parliament in Wales, alongside in Northern Ireland, Jersey and other jurisdictions. In its latest recommendations in 2023, the UN Committee called on the UK and devolved jurisdictions to develop mechanisms to ensure that children and young people’s parliaments feed systematically into public decision-making.
Read more about the potential closure of the UK Youth Parliament here.