Jim Corben, of Westhayes, New Road, Teignmouth, writes:

It is surprising to find that county councillor Chris Clarance, in his letter on March 5, so quickly jumps to the defence of the county council in its arbitrary decision to withdraw funding without consulation from the youth scheme in west Teignmouth.

Even more surprising, perhaps, is that the county council should take this decision about a project whose training programme in its first year, according to John Ware's report in your paper, has already led to a 40 per cent drop in youth crime and anti-social behaviour, a major priority of Teignbridge Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership.

This seems yet another case that, when faced with having to make cuts in public expenditure on the reduction of local crime, local authorities maintain their budgets for punishing the criminal at the expense of schemes which offer a real chance of reducing crime in the first place.

The excuse that government funding for the YIP ceases on March 31 hardly holds water in the case of west Teignmouth, as this was known to be so when the county council agreed in 2009 to fund the scheme for an initial two-year period. The project was never intended as a short-term fix.

The county council, moreover, appears to be in clear breach of the terms of its well publicised Compact with voluntary organisations in this case.

Will you please, therefore, Cllr Clarance, join your fellow Teignmouth town and county councillors in seeking some sensible reinstatement of funding for the project and honouring of your authority's Compact.

However, you are right, councillor, in remarking upon the fragmentation of provision for youth in the county and the need to focus attention on the long-term issues for the young.

You are right, too, to resurrect the proposal for a decent youth work building fit for purpose in the town.

This should, however, in no sense detract from the need in this present day and age for such schemes as west Teignmouth and others which offer young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds and those who have been seen as failures in the school system, the opportunity to regain confidence and self-belief and retrain for working life, to feature among the prioirites in any future strategy for the development of youth work services.

The time is surely ripe, before youth work in all its forms suffers from further series of arbitrary or rapidly administerd flat percentage cuts in its budgets, with the endless wrangling that will ensue, for Devon Children's Trust to implement a major review of policy and resources of youth support services and sporting facilities in the county, in which appropriate voluntary and statuotry agencies and young people should take part.

From this could arise a more composite, yet flexible, strategy and development programme to address the longer term youth issues to which Cllr Clarance refers and which could well also result in more effective and efficient use of all available resources.THIS AND OTHER LETTERS IN OUR ONLINE EDITION