YOUTH crime is falling across Cumbria and a leading Barrow councillor has backed the work being done to stop it.

Cumbria Youth Offending Service is working hard to stop young people ending up before the courts and reducing re-offending, said councillor Anne Burns, the Labour member for Hindpool.

Re-offending rates have dropped from 41 percent to 38 percent in a year and in 2017-18, just one child in Cumbria received a custodial sentence, she said.

Cllr Burns, cabinet member for children’s services, told a meeting of the full council: “The youth offending service is working hard to prevent young people offending and re-offending and is having a positive effect in reducing the number slipping into the criminal justice system and custody.”

But more work is needed as it was ‘very easy’ for criminals to exploit young people, she warned.

Cllr Burns, the Labour member for Hindpool, said: “We have to make sure that in today’s world of County Lines crime that we work across the board with all agencies and get in there early enough to ensure these young people don’t slip into that criminal justice system. Once they are in there, they are lost to us, and we don’t want them lost to us, which is why we do this work.”

Cllr Sue Sanderson, a retired teacher and former youth offending volunteer, said the service had been recognised by Ofsted and Care Quality Commission inspectors as being ‘high quality and very effective’.

“This is despite the criminal justice system being the lowest funded of all the departments in the Government,” said Cllr Sanderson, a Liberal Democrat cabinet member from Ulverston. “All of this contributes to stopping people ending up in institutions which are really underfinanced.”

Councillors have approved a new Youth Justice Plan for the year ahead.

Cllr Phil Dew, a Conservative representing Kirkby Stephen, said the work was having an impact with the figures on a downward trend.

He said: “There’s still a hard-to-reach, hardcore group of young people whose attitudes and behaviours are proving very difficult to change. It would be easy to write those off as they are a very relatively small number, but I am heartened by the determination this plan shows.”