by Joe Barratt
When I was approached by Helen Ball, the Town Clerk for Shrewsbury, to lead a session on engaging with the next generation of young people as part of the Shrewsbury Big Town Plan Festival, I had to reflect for a moment. In early 2020, what now seems like a lifetime ago, I delivered a presentation to council leaders at an LGA event on a similar topic. Yet, most of that content now seems almost trivial.
The coronavirus pandemic has had such a profound impact on the lives of young people that the simple request to involve them in our town centres doesn’t go far enough. Engaging young people in shaping the future of our towns can no longer be an exercise that is desired, it is fundamentally required. They have to be an integral part of the recovery from this pandemic, otherwise I fear for both the immediate and long term future of our town centre economies and communities.
To properly convey the importance of this, I started the presentation by providing an overview of the impact of the pandemic on young people through the lens of the indices of multiple deprivation (Income, Employment, Education, Health, Crime, Housing and Environment). This focused on how two thirds of millennials have lost income during the pandemic1, how young people are more likely to have lost their job than older people2, and how an under-25 working minimum wage is currently unable to afford privately-rented accommodation in every region in England3.
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