A COUNCILLOR has called for more funding to be pumped into youth facilities to help stem the rise in anti-social behaviour across West Devon.

Bere Ferrers councillor Peter Crozier declined to slate the culprits, but asked members of West Devon Borough Council’s hub committee to consider using some of its cash to give young people more to do.

Cllr Crozier made his appeal as the committee were considering funding for what the council described as nine crucial community and voluntary organisations.

The nine are in the last 12 months of a three-year funding deal with the council and are in the first stages of talks over receiving more cash for a further two years from March 2023.

Officers have made it clear that the council has a limited amount of money to hand out and they cannot possibly fund every group which asks for it.

But some committee members wanted to make sure any other equally valuable organisations who also needed support were not slipping through the net.

And Cllr Crozier told members that there had been a rise in anti-social behaviour throughout the borough.

He picked out Tavistock, where vandals caused thousands of pounds of damage to Whitchurch Primary School, Okehampton, which has been suffering a raft of damage and assaults in Simmons Park and Bere Alston, but added police had told him there were also problems in Horrabridge.

Cllr Crozier, who appealed for ‘greater investment in youth facilities’, said the youth centre in Bere Alston, where the village hall roof had been damaged, opened just once a week, could do with opening more frequently.

Cllr Crozier, who was backed by Okehampton representative Cllr Paul Vachon, said: ‘Youth, when it gets frustrated, takes it out on community assets. I would like some more efforts to help the youth.’

Committee members agreed that when future funding is discussed in September, they would consider whether they were ‘putting money in the right place’ and whether they should have the option to consider other groups.

Organisations currently funded are Citizens Advice Torridge, North, Mid and West Devon (£32,900 per year), West Devon CVS (£5,100), OCRA (Okehampton Community and Recreation Association) (£1,333), Okehampton Community Transport and Tavistock Ring and Ride (£6,533 each), Young Devon (£2,500), Tamar Estuaries Consultative Forum (£4,500, index-linked), Tamar Valley AONB (£8,835) and the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site Partnership Board (£4,000).

The council said the funding, agreed in 2019, has helped the organisations have longer-term financial certainty, while offering important support services to the borough’s residents, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, when revenue streams and normal activities were disrupted by lockdown and social distancing measures.

Cllr Vachon, the hub’s lead member for communities, said: ‘We had no way of knowing quite how important this funding would be in 2019, as it helped sustain the valuable work of these organisations during the Covid-19 pandemic. We know that working in partnership like this is essential to all of our communities.’