The construction of a £9 million pound youth centre in Crewe could have serious negative impact on children's services in our town.

'RAIDING' the early help for families budget to plough funds into the proposed Crewe Youth Zone could have a detrimental impact on children across the borough as a whole, according to multiple Cheshire East councillors.

Two Conservative councillors told Monday's meeting of the children and families committee they were not opposed to the youth zone but they were concerned about where the funding was coming from and the perceived inequality for young people across the borough.

It is estimated the youth zone will cost around £9m and £2.6m of that will come from the Crewe Town Fund, on the provision of an acceptable business case, and an estimated £4.2m could come from funds raised by Onside Youth Zone.

The children and families committee was discussing the fact £400,000 has been proposed for the zone in the Cheshire East budget for 2025/26, while the council is looking to save £424,000 next year by redesigning its early help services.

Cllr Jos Saunders (Poynton East, Con) said there was already perceived inequalities because Crewe was getting the youth zone while deprived children in other areas such as Macclesfield and Congleton wouldn't have access to the site because there was no local transport.

She added: "The other thing I've got, is my colleague [Cllr George Hayes] called it a raid on early help services – that £400,000 in 2025/26 which is going to be used through the restructure of early help budgets.

"We keep hearing how good early help is, how it can help families and it does exactly what it says on the tin – it provides early help and support for families who are experiencing problems. "By doing so it also helps prevent taking children into care so, inevitably, it also helps save us money… so to me it seems completely counter-intuitive to take money from early help to fund this service which will help the young people in Crewe but it will also have a negative impact on families elsewhere, including in Crewe, because some of the families who've got young children, they're going to be affected by that lack of early help as well." Cllr Hayes (Congleton West, Con) said he had seen no business case for the youth zone. "I would have anticipated the business case coming before putting revenue costs into our budget commitments going forward and I'm unsure how we've managed to estimate a revenue cost in the budget of £4,000 because we've not seen a business case to evidence or prove that," he said. Committee chair Kath Flavell (Sandbach Elworth, Lab) said the committee was not approving anything at this stage regarding funding, just making its comments. "In terms of the inequality, if we didn't put the youth zone in then nobody would gain," she said. "Any schemes that you bring forward, have got to be done in one place first. If it's successful it might be something we can put on a future plan." She added: "I don't want it to feel like a negative because we're not doing one somewhere else, it's still a very positive thing for Crewe." Youth services in Macclesfield include the Cheshire East Youth Support Service of Great King Street, which organise help for SEND pupils and hosts the Duke of Edinburgh Award in our town. There was no suggestion that the Early Help Budget would allocate funds to town's that aren't getting a new youth centre. You can read more about the Crewe plans on our sister site, Crewe Nub News. See also: Business plan to be prepared for new Crewe Youth Zone at Crewe car park. Macclesfield: Have you signed up for our Friday weekly newsletter? It contains each week's top 10 Macclesfield news stories, and one FREE exclusive article? 1035 of you have signed up already. Simply enter your email address in the shaded box below or on this link. Free from pop-up ads, or unwanted surveys, Macclesfield Nub News is a quality online newspaper which produces 30-40 stories a week for our town. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter.