The building has been derelict for some years but recently a large section of the roof was blown off in high winds. The church, a local landmark with fine Grade II listed architecture, is owned by a Nigerian-based religious organisation the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star which the council will be billing for the repairs.

In the last few years, several proposals have been put forward to restore and develop the building for community use. As recently as 2003 the Manchester-based charity ‘Youth Charter for Sport, Culture and the Arts’, which had previously been unsuccessful with plans to build a sporting centre at the church, was confident it could go ahead and create an African Cultural Centre at a cost of £2m. The scheme was supposed to include resources for sporting, artistic, economic and spiritual heritage activities as well as a programme to reflect the aspirations of young people and the wider community in Granby Toxteth.

The main aim of the proposals was to combat the social exclusion and deprivation of the area's youth through provision of creative alternatives for self development so diverting young people away from offending. Sadly, funding for the project, which was supposed to have been raised by the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, has not been found and plans for the building seem to have been shelved.

The need for this kind of development, however, has not gone away. Given that one in five people in Liverpool are aged between 5-19, provision of out-of-school services for young people, especially in areas of deprivation, should be very near the top of the municipal shopping list. Youth services are funded through the council's education budget but last year the council operated only 12 youth or community centres in the whole city, a city with a population of 441,856 (that's one centre for every 7364 young people).

There are many other projects with their own venues which are supported by Liverpool Youth Services. These are operated by voluntary or private organisations across the city but, according to the service's own report, "The building stock is of a poor quality, access is difficult for young people with restricted mobility and the current location of buildings is not underpinned by an accommodation strategy. Opportunities to participate in service provision are historically based. Further, the strategy to respond to the needs of the most disadvantaged is underdeveloped and the level of usage by Black and Minority young people is unrepresentative."

Where out-of-school provision does not exist, is poorly resourced or operates in a way which effectively excludes young people of different religious / ethnic groups, it is unsurprising that young people who are forced to hang out on the street should end up getting involved in anti-social behaviour. Achievement at school shows a drastic decline at age 11 when target attainment drops from 70% to 40%, a figure below national averages, and there is perhaps a correlation here with young offending. The three most frequent offences committed by young people in Liverpool in 2003/ 04 were: motoring offences (31%), drugs (11%) and theft/ handling (10%). The first two of these activities, along with vandalism, would seem to be recreational. If many more and better youth facilities were operational, for longer hours (some are only open a few hours a week), anti-social behaviour amongst Liverpool’s youth would undoubtedly decline.

The council’s Corporate Priorities for the young people include “monitoring the service plan”, “further developing quality assurance” and “the development and implementation of service level agreements as a means of commissioning, monitoring and evaluating the contributions”, priorities which will no doubt employ a whole management strata while young people are still waiting on the street for overdue change.

The Youth Service itself aims to “ensure that young people are empowered to participate effectively in making and influencing decisions affecting them and their community, to work in partnership with key providers to create the widest range of opportunities for children and young people and to ensure that new and existing resources are utilised to maximise young people's access to the best facilities in their locality.”

These fine words will not amount to much while wealthy people across the rest of Liverpool are happy to vote for a low council tax at the same time as they see young people denied opportunity. It is unacceptable for young people to be left without adequate facilities because the fallout impacts on us all and on the future of the city as a whole. The council constantly boasts of its low council tax but when essential services such as provision for youth are underfunded, this can be no boast.

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Merseyside Youth Association:  http://www.mya.org.uk/
Liverpool City Council Youth Service:  http://www.lys.org.uk/tys/aims.html
L8 Cathedral design proposal:  http://www.pauline-roscoe.co.uk/ycs.html
Youth crime stats:  http://www.merseyfire.gov.uk/pages/IRMP/pdf/Crime%20Audit%20Summary.pdf
Education stats:
 http://www.liverpool.gov.uk/Images/c-tax_booklet_perf_info_tcm21-23761.pdf