News: Council

Brighton and Hove City Council leader Jason Kitcat on eager young minds

Friday was national ‘Takeover Day’, a government scheme to give young people the chance to work with adults for the day and be involved in decision making.

Generally work experience can be really useful, but the difference with Takeover Day is that young people get the opportunity to shadow professionals in different fields, and be directly involved in decisions they ordinarily wouldn’t get the chance to.

The range of organisations taking part is very impressive – including public sector, private companies and charities. Last year this included schools, councils, MPs of all parties, government departments, the Rugby Football Union, the British Red Cross, Great Ormond Street Hospital, and the V&A Museum in London.

This year we hosted a dozen local young people at Brighton and Hove City Council for the day, including Erin who shadowed the Chief Executive Penny Thompson, and Iona (an aspiring journalist) who shadowed me.

Between them they got to meet with the Chamber of Commerce, meet key managers from within the council to learn about how we’re doing things more efficiently, catch up with the Lord Lieutenant of East Sussex Mr Peter Field, get involved with our planning for the week ahead and meet the staff who support us to find out more about the work they do.

Young people benefitted from the chance to experience the professional workplace and make their voices heard. They can often offer a fresh perspective on the way things are done, as we see from the valuable input of city’s Youth Council representatives on our committees.

We need to challenge the sense that our younger generation are excluded from politics and democracy. I hope that through schemes like this, we can help break down barriers between generations and encourage young people to get more involved in their communities.