How do you find out what young people want? It’s a question that preoccupies lots of well-meaning politicians. On the estate I represent on the council, the answers are always the same: more sport, somewhere to hang out such as a youth cafe or a well-lit youth shelter, someone to talk to about any problems I have, something for girls to do, a safer and better environment on Rose Hill so I’m not ashamed to bring my friends here.

As part of our ongoing battle to secure more funding for Rose Hill’s young people, the city council recently commissioned a report about what young people on Rose Hill want, what’s available now, and what opportunities there might be. It’s a fascinating piece of work, and highlights some of the real problems: that we have a county council which spends just £53 per head per young person on youth services, compared to a national average of more than £100; that the number of NEET young people on Rose Hill estate is comparable to the numbers on some of the toughest estates in Tower Hamlets, where the consultant working for us has just completed a similar project; that unlike Tower Hamlets, there’s not a single youth support team specifically working with identified at-risk teenagers on Rose Hill, as there’s a shortage of youth workers wanting to work in the evenings. (Forgive me, but if you’ve trained as a youth worker, perhaps you might have thought that evening work came as part of the territory?!)

I need to say that our youth workers on the estate are great: they get no funding apart from one or two of their salaries, and have to fundraise for everything else. We would have many more problems than we do if it wasn’t for Maggie and her team’s hard work, and nothing I say here is to criticise them. They work incredibly hard - but all they can do is attempt to divert young people from trouble, with no-one to call on to provide in depth support to young people at risk. The more I think about it, the more furious I get.

I’ve given up arguing for what we thought might be a reasonable deal: county council funding so that the youth club can open every night for a few hours. It wasn’t clear to me what the problem was: the police say it’s utterly vital, we have two massive surveys of opinion on the estate talking about how there’s nothing for young people to do, and the city would have put some money in too. But it’s not going to happen - the county are impervious to argument, and if they haven’t an answer, they just don’t call you back or reply to your letters or emails.

But this year, £5 million is coming to Oxfordshire County Council for the service to replace Connexions, the youth advice service, and another £1 million or so is coming for specific young people-led projects. It’s all new money, and fantastically, it’s all been ringfenced by government for youth services of one sort or another. I’d like the leader of the council, Keith Mitchell, and the portfolio holder for children’s services, Louise Chapman, to tell me exactly how much of that cash is coming for the 387 young people aged 13-19 on Rose Hill who they have so far failed. And while they’re at it, I’d like a breakdown of wards in Oxfordshire, ranked by disadvantage, and a breakdown of how this extra money is being allocated to make the most difference. Cos until I started shouting last autumn, Connexions had never run any services on Rose Hill estate, and I’m convinced they don’t do any work on any of the other estates either, just sit holed up in their office on Gloucester Green in the city centre. And cos I don’t trust the county council not to spend it in bloody Henley and bloody Wallingford and bloody Bloxham, when it would make so much difference to spend it on the young people of Rose Hill, and Blackbird Leys, and Barton, and Wood Farm. Our coppers know this: just ask Inspector Phil Standish, whose team deal with young people getting into trouble every day on Rose Hill. The local community knows this. And yet, for partisan political reasons, money keeps getting put into leafy rural villages in pretty Oxfordshire, leaving our estates with no bloody resources. It’s a scandal - not one the Oxford Mail will cover as once again they failed to get a journo to area committee - but a scandal nonetheless.

But, you know, what do you do when you’ve a county council who manifestly fail in their responsibilities and don’t give a two hoots about young people on Rose Hill? As a city councillor, you fund whatever you can, however you can, through the city council. Just before Christmas, six young people came to the residents’ and tenants’ association. They wanted to talk about what should be different on Rose Hill. Lots of their ideas were way beyond what’s possible (though they shouldn’t be - why can’t we have a swimming pool on Rose Hill? Barton has one), but one wasn’t. And tonight at the area committee, we found the money for a small thing: floodlighting the streetsports area so it’s usable all year round. £12k, but it’s exactly what the young people who came to that committee meeting said they wanted. I’ll text them all tomorrow and tell them. One thing accomplished, but once again the city council picks up the pieces for an incompetent uncaring rural-dominated city-hating county council leadership. I’m almost angry enough to say that I’ll stand for the county myself next time, not that it’ll make a blind bit of difference.