Ambition and UK Youth merge

The youth charities Ambition and UK Youth have merged, more than 70 years after having initial conversations about coming together.

Ambition, a membership body for organisations that work with young people in the UK, has become a subsidiary of UK Youth, which provides services to young people through a network of local youth organisations across the UK.

The charities said they would be able to achieve more by working together and would be better placed to respond to the challenges faced by young people today.

A spokeswoman for the charities said both organisations would keep their individual names and brands, although members of both charities will be consulted on future branding and priorities for 2018.

The charities will continue to have separate trustee boards, although five UK Youth trustees will join the Ambition board to take a majority position.

The spokeswoman said Anna Smee and Emma Revie, the chief executives of UK Youth and Ambition respectively, began discussing a merger shortly after Revie took up her post last September.

Smee will continue as chief executive of UK Youth, which has 90 employees, and Revie will remain chief executive of Ambition, which has six members of staff.

The spokeswoman said there had been no redundancies as a result of the merger, which was completed on 15 September.

Ambition and UK Youth will maintain their offices in Vauxhall and Highbury respectively, both in London, although it was likely that staff from both organisations would work across both sites, the spokeswoman said.

Both organisations have experienced falling income in recent years, with UK Youth’s falling from £8.6m in the year to 31 March 2015 to £5.3m a year later, while Ambition’s was down from £2.1m to £1.3m over the same period.

But the spokeswoman said both charities had reported healthy finances with strong reserves in recent years. “While this merger might allow for cost savings through shared services, it was inspired by a joint mission to provide all young people with access to high-quality and appropriate youth services in their local community,” she said. “Both organisations bring significant financial assets to the partnership.”

Records showed that the possibility of a merger was first discussed between the two organisations in 1945, the spokeswoman said.

Smee said the charities had a shared commitment to empowering young people and working in partnership with local, regional and national youth organisations to deliver high-quality services.

“Together we will be able to amplify the voices of more young people and respond to their needs by forging wider partnerships to deliver joined-up services in local communities,” she said.

Revie said: “We’re passionate about supporting youth organisations to provide high-quality services for young people, whatever their backgrounds or circumstances. By joining forces with UK Youth, I’m confident we have the potential to be greater together than the sum of our parts, and I’m excited to see what we can achieve.”

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Charity Commission announces inquiry into youth charity

A statutory inquiry into the Youth Development Summer Camp Project by the regulator was opened last August, partly because there appears to be no safeguarding policy

The Charity Commission has announced an inquiry into a youth charity that failed to inform the regulator that one of its trustees had been arrested in relation to a safeguarding issue.

The commission said in a statement today that it opened a statutory inquiry into the Youth Development Summer Camp Project, which provides or assists in the provision of holiday camps for young people, in part because the charity did not appear to have any written safeguarding policies in place.

The regulator opened the inquiry in August last year but did not announce it until today because of an ongoing police investigation.

It said that although one of the charity’s trustees, who has not been named, was arrested last year under the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, the charity had not made a serious incident report to the regulator.

The commission is also investigating whether any disclosure and barring checks have been carried out.

“The charity’s annual returns for financial years ending 2014 onwards indicate that the charity has no written safeguarding policies in place, including in relation to risk management or vulnerable beneficiaries,” the regulator said today.

“Due to the nature of the charity’s activities, these factors have raised serious regulatory concerns for the commission and require further examination by way of a statutory inquiry.”

The inquiry will examine matters such as whether the charity’s trustees have properly managed the risk to the charity’s beneficiaries and services, whether they have complied with their legal duties and responsibilities in the governance and management of the charity, particularly in relation to policies and procedures regarding safeguarding, and whether trustees have protected the charity’s assets, including its reputation.

The charity had an income of £69,166 in the year to 15 October 2015, according to its entry on the Charity Commission register.

Third Sector was unable to contact anyone at the charity for comment.

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