MORE work is to be done to encourage young people to join Local Youth Networks (LYN) after it was discovered an average of just two teenagers have been setting funding priorities for the city's youth projects.

Wiltshire councillor Ricky Rogers resigned from his role as the LYN champion on Salisbury Area Board in June after funding for a fashion project on gender, sexuality and lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender issues was turned down.

Having been in the role for four years, he said the city's young people had been dealt "a total slap in the face" by the Tory councillors who voted en bloc against the £3,000 grant for The Fabric of Life and claimed “personal agendas” had come into play.

Speaking at Salisbury Area Board on Thursday, councillor Matthew Dean said: "When councillor Ricky Rogers resigned at the last meeting [as champion], there was an accusation put that we were not listening to the views of young people when we were giving out grants.

"I have felt for sometime the LYN isn't representative of young people and looking into it I was firstly disappointed to see Cllr Rogers had only attended one meeting in six months of that panel and even more disturbing was that the average attendance of young people at that meeting is two for the whole of Salisbury.

"Notwithstanding the integrity and standing of the people turning up to do the role is, the point is that two people cannot represent the whole of Salisbury's young people for grants, that is not a tenable situation."

He added: "I think there's a job of leadership here from this area board that we need to support LYN and see how we can encourage participation within it because it's clear for the last year or so it hasn't been operating properly and this is in contrast with some of the other LYNs in urban areas that are highly successful."

Councillor Rogers highlighted the fact that since Winnie Manning, a senior youth worker with Wiltshire Youth Development Service, had stepped down several months ago, she had not been replaced.

He said: "It's sad that the decline [in numbers of young people on the LYN] seems to be coordinated with the loss of the professional officer who used to guide and nurture them. We were promised this vacant post was going to be filled and it hasn't happened."

Salisbury's community engagement officer Karen Linaker told councillors she was hopeful more young people would join the LYN over the coming months.

Councillors agreed to find out whether there are plans to find a replacement youth worker.