Issue - meetings

None received.

There were no questions from the Youth Council.

None received.

The Youth Mayor and Deputy Youth Mayor gave an update on their recent work.

Since starting in May 2025, they had attended a number of council and community events including attending Goodwood’s Festival of Speed, being invited to the Rotary Club’s Winter Ball and being VIPs at the Dick Whittington and his Cat Pantomime at the Gordon Craig Theatre. 

The Youth Mayor and Deputy Youth Mayor had shared their thoughts and ideas as part of the working party group shaping the Youth Advisory Board & Youth Action Group and agreed to take part in all Schools’ Parliament meetings to ensure primary schools were connected with them and they recently used a community event to hear directly from young people in Stevenage and to share what they did in their roles.

The Youth Mayor and Deputy Youth Mayor advised that they had asked the Mayor and Councillor Coleen De Freitas to support them in offering assemblies to secondary schools with a focus on the importance of voting, education and celebrating differences and they hoped that schools would be keen to book them in.

They advised that they were looking forward to continuing their work in 2026.

In accordance with Standing Orders, a written answer to the following question will be circulated on a supplementary agenda:

How does the council plan to encourage young people to vote and educate themselves on the significance of voting, taking into account that the voting age is due to drop?

The Council received a question from the Youth Council regarding the proposed reduction in the voting age.  The response to the question had been published in the supplementary agenda for the meeting.

There was no supplementary question.