Report of the Corporate Director for Children and Adults

Rachel Armitage, Electoral Services Engagement Officer, introduced the report giving an update on the work of the Youth Cabinet, and also work being done to improve civic engagement of young people including a summary of voter registration activity. Rachel highlighted the following information on children and young people’s participation in governance:

(a)  a new annual student conference is being initiated in order to engage more young people on education improvement issues;

(b)  a Youth Council event called ‘Your Voice Counts’ was co-produced by young people from Central locality. This included three workshops designed and delivered by young people exploring community safety, cleanliness and personal contribution;

(c)  two Primary Parliament meetings in June engaged over 150 year 5 and 6 children from 34 city schools on the theme of ‘Building a Whole and Healthy You’;

Rachel then highlighted the following information on civic engagement and voter registration:

(d)  the Bite the Ballot Scheme encouraged 16-21 year olds to become active citizens and register to vote. This role has now been taken on by Nottingham City Council, with additional work on co-creating new resources with local partners such as workshops;

(e)  future work may expand into working with under 16s, potentially through  Opportunity Notts;

(f)  over 1000 eligible voters have been added to the electoral register between 2014 and 2015, which is higher than other East Midlands areas. There are strong working relationships with local schools, FE colleges, universities and third-sector organisations;

(g)  successful events have included DeDay in April 2015, which was a final push for voter registration before the 2015 general election, and the National Voter Registration Drive which takes place every February. There are also up to 60 young people interested in joining the volunteer programme, interested in encouraging voter registration and participation amongst their peers;

The following points were raised during the discussion which followed:

(h)   voter registration and engagement could be promoted to skills to help with their citizenship and British values requirements under Ofsted;

(i)  Electoral Services would not be averse to working with younger children of primary school age, as citizenship is something that should be instilled at an early age. Children of this age have shown interest in voting;

(j)  There needs to be some focus on voter turnout, in addition to registering to vote, as nationally there is lower turnout among young people. This will be incorporated into future workshops, looking at the barriers that young people find to voting.

RESOLVED to

(1)  acknowledge and support the achievements of children and young people engaging in participation and active citizenship work through the Participation in Governance programme and the work of the Youth Cabinet;

(2)  recognise the importance of encouraging civic engagement and voter registration in helping children and young people become active and informed citizens who can confidently take part in civic life and make a contribution to democratic society;

(3)  support this work and promote, wherever possible, voter registration amongst its 16+ service users; and provide a lead contact for civic engagement and voter registration who can liase with the Electoral Services Engagement Officer.