CHILDREN will be left to roam the streets of Rose Hill if the estate’s youth service is hit by council cuts, a resident who grew up with the service has warned.

Ryan Weller, 20, fears changes to The Oval by Oxfordshire County Council will hit the services on offer to youngsters.

The authority is planning to turn the facility into a “satellite” centre as part of changes that will see a further 22 centres lose all authority funding.

The centre will offer more services, the council said, with extra help for children experiencing issues such as school absence and teenage pregnancy.

But Mr Weller, who visited the club daily through his teenage years, is worried this will shift focus away from other types of youth work.

He said: “If the club is not open every day we are going to have kids on the street, bored, entertaining themselves.

“There will be problems.”

Mr Weller added: “The hubs will be targeted towards people with issues such as teenage pregnancy, but the youth club runs workshops on safe sex, drugs and knife crime. So it makes no sense to cut the youth club.”

Council spokesman Paul Smith said: “The new service will be tasked with dealing with issues such as absence and exclusion from school, young people not in employment, education and training, teenage pregnancy, substance misuse and anti-social or offending behaviour as well as the traditional youth service.

“These services are currently provided separate from each other.”

The plans, agreed by the council’s cabinet, will see seven youth centres, including two in Oxford, become ‘hubs’ to take the majority of youth work with a focus on “early intervention”.

But council funding at 22 other centres faces the axe. Of these, six are on school sites, and the county council is in discussions to keep them open. Community groups have been set up to save another half dozen threatened centres.

Eight non-council venues, which receive varying levels of help and resources from County Hall, will be given an extra year of support to provide time for community groups to take over.

The county council’s children’s services scrutiny committee will examine the youth service cuts today. Labour deputy leader Richard Stevens said: “We want to understand how the authority proposes to carry on meeting its statutory obligations.”

Oxford city councillor for Rose Hill Ed Turner said: “The bottom line is if cuts to staffing and hours go ahead, local young people in this area of Oxford will really suffer.

“They will not be able to build up the same sort of relationships with youth workers as is the case now, and I am certain that incidents of crime and antisocial behaviour will rise.”