Services for children and young people in Kent are facing the axe – yet again.

Some 80 groups in the county – working with 8,000 youngsters – could fold if funding is withdrawn by Kent County Council which needs to shave £900,000 a year from its budget.

Spending on youth services in England and Wales has already been slashed by 70% in a decade.

And now tens of youth clubs in the county face being wiped out by the latest financial pressures.

This is combined with an axe currently also hanging over 35 children's centres which face closure in the restructuring of community services.

Amid years of austerity, we know about the monetary pressures councils are under. I’ve also sat in enough local authority meetings to appreciate that whatever your political leaning – no decision to withdraw money is straightforward.

But at what stage is this not just about youth clubs but instead an abject failure across the board to provide properly for the next generation?

Being the summer holidays – stories of anti-social youths up to no good are perhaps more commonplace than they would be in the depths of December.

And I’m not about to suggest a youth club on every corner would stop some sections of society running riot, nor that those taking advantage of those services will now turn feral because I’m not that naive.

That said, research in 2019 by an All-Party Parliamentary Group suggested a growing link between cuts to youth services and increased problems with knife crime as safe spaces for children to step away from trouble were withdrawn.

And just last month Southend council told a Commons committee that it believed county lines gangs were now preying on young people where cuts to youth services had left a void.

Youth services can’t cover costs with hot air. Yet if we get this wrong, society will be meeting the costs further down the line in everything from mental health provision, policing, healthcare and domestic violence support.

Saving money in the short term is all well and good but it is creating a ticking societal timebomb that will blow up in all of our faces and leave the balance sheets of the future in tatters too.