Agenda and minutes

It was agreed:

1. Areeba is the Youth Mayor for the municipal year 2024/2025
2. Violet is the Deputy Youth Mayor for the municipal year 2024/2025 and will become the Youth Mayor for the municipal year of 2025/2026.

The Chair welcomed all attendees and introductions took place.

See above for apologies for absence.

Councillor Members of the Youth Cabinet are asked whether they have any interest in any item on the agenda and if so, to formally declare that interest.

There were no declarations of interest made at the meeting.

The Minutes of the last meeting held on 16 April 2024 are attached.

The minutes of the meeting held on 16 April 2024 were agreed and signed by the Chair.

There were no matters arising from the minutes.

Each Committee is required to have a nominated Corporate Parenting Champion; they will receive training from Childrens Services and will be responsible for advocating for Corporate Parenting matters in each committee. Champions will be appointed by each Committee at their first meeting of the municipal year. If the representative wishes to also attend Corporate Parenting Boards scheduled for the municipal year 2024-2025 these are:

06th June 2024

02nd July 2024

10th September 2024

03rd December 2024

09th January 2025

04th March 2025.

It was agreed:

1. Councillor Rydheard is the nominated Corporate Parenting Champion of the Youth Cabinet for the municipal year 2024/2025.

An amendment to the terms of reference has been made in red, to be agreed.

The Chair highlighted the proposed amendment to the terms of reference.

It was agreed:

1. The amended terms of reference were agreed.

Update to be provided at the meeting.

Following on from the Youth Cabinet motion made to Council, Adele Crowshaw provided an update of the progress made by Youth Cabinet around the vape statue. An artist has been sourced to run the project and has a plan of how the statue will look, a quote for the work has been provided but unfortunately the project has come to a standstill due to being unable to source the funding for the statue.

It was agreed:

1. Raise the issue of funding with Democratic Services to help find a solution.

Samir to provide an update at the meeting.

Samir gave feedback from the Climate Conference that he had recently attended and advised that he has been appointed on the North West Climate Committee. Samir advised members of a new app which is being produced that will be piloted in Manchester. The app is called ‘4planet’ and is being produced to help people with things like saving water and reducing litter. Samir advised that the North West Climate Committee is involved in advising around the functions of the app and providing feedback.

Samir, Kael and Alex to provide an update at the meeting.

Samir advised of a new project for the Youth Cabinet in Bury and explained that the project doesn’t require much funding. Samir explained that not all schools in Bury have a student council and advised that the project would be around establishing student councils in each high school in the borough, with the view of all student councils keeping in touch with each other and taking turns to hold events.

Samir explained that once all student councils have been established in high schools across the borough, stage 2 of the project would be to ensure that they are all consistent with a view that this project could be replicated around other Local Authorities and be a country wide project that started in Bury.

In response to a youth member question, Samir advised that the project would be for high schools only and would ask that one member of each student council across the borough attends the Youth Cabinet, to bring different youth voices to the meeting and to get more young people involved in school councils.

Adele Crowshaw asked Youth Cabinet Members to write their ideas out around the project to formulate a plan. Suggestions included; that all schools councils will work in the same way, that a schools council could take over and host an informal youth cabinet meeting, Youth Cabinet could promote the project across high schools, co-production training with teachers to take place, a school council addition of circles of influence, use workshops to create the format of the school councils, events could be held at a weekend to improve attendance, different systems for choosing members of the schools councils were discussed.

The Chair asked Youth Members for a list of schools that already had a school council and noted this down as a starting point for the project.

It was agreed:

1. The project will be discussed further in informal meetings and progress will be fed back to the Youth Cabinet committee.

Planning for the event to take place in the meeting.

Adele Crowshaw advised that unfortunately the Circles of Influence event that had been scheduled was cancelled. The Youth Service are still looking at re-arranging this post September and before the October half term.

In relation to a question around students who can attend the event, Jen Mills responded that it can be any high school student from any year group and will express this to schools prior to the next event to ensure that there are young people from a diverse group.

Youth Cabinet members took part in the debate, there was a side for and against.

It was agreed by a majority vote that the voting age should be lowered to 16.

It was agreed:

1. The next debate topic is: should more high schools be academised?

Daniel provided an update from the GYMCA meeting that took place last Thursday and advised that discussions took place around EBACC (The English Baccalaureate) which is a new proposal that has been officially launched.

Daniel advised of the GYMCA election and a member from Oldham and Manchester were appointed the role of the Chair. A guest from 4planet attended the meeting and spoke of a launch which will take place in Manchester soon.  The ‘Our Pass’ travel pass was discussed and ideas were suggested around e-tickets and exclusive concert tickets which will be forwarded to TFGM.

Adele Crowshaw advised that she is hoping that the Bury Youth Cabinet will be able to host the next Youth Focus North West meeting in the Elizabethan Suite.