Ask a teenager in Ebbsfleet what they do after school and you'll hear the same three answers: the Co-op, the park, or home.
It's not a lack of ambition. It's just the limit of what's available to them.
Ebbsfleet is one of the most exciting places I've worked. It's a whole new town, with new neighbourhoods, new families, and new lives and memories being made. More than a quarter of residents are 16 or under, and the population is growing by around a fifth a year. You rarely get the chance to shape a place before it settles.
I grew up in care. I'm in the rooms I'm in now because youth services and civil society worked together for young people like me. So when Ebbsfleet Development Corporation asked us to find out what young people want their town to be, it felt personal.
Don't run the listening exercise yourself. Young people rarely open up to a consultation form, or to an officer they've never met. Work with an organisation they already trust, one that knows how to reach the quiet young people as well as the confident ones. EDC knew there were gaps. What it needed was to hear young people describe those gaps in their own words, and a plan built on what they said.
Throughout 2026, our team worked with more than 300 young people across Ebbsfleet, Dartford and Gravesham. We also spoke to more than 15 organisations, from councils and Kent Police to youth charities and faith groups.
The young people told us they wanted somewhere warm and safe to be with their friends, without being moved on. They wanted it to be free: more than half said the cost stops them taking part. And they wanted a say. Only one in five feel listened to when decisions are made about their area. One young person asked our team whether there was anywhere they could just be young, when street signs they passed told them what they couldn't do.
Here's what I'd say to any council or development corporation facing the same questions.
Don't run the listening exercise yourself. Young people rarely open up to a consultation form, or to an officer they've never met. Work with an organisation they already trust, one that knows how to reach the quiet young people as well as the confident ones. EDC knew there were gaps. What it needed was to hear young people describe those gaps in their own words, and a plan built on what they said.
Demand won't show up in a survey. When we showed young people a youth club timetable from elsewhere, the reaction was close to disbelief. You can't ask for something you've never seen. Make provision visible, free and low-pressure, and they'll come.
You need both capital and revenue. Developer contributions help pay for new facilities. The more difficult money to find is for the staff, programmes and subsidised places that make a building work for those young people. Plan for both from the very beginning.
Pay young people for their time. The plan proposes a youth forum of 15 young people paid £15 an hour, which comes to around £10,800 a year. Compared to a capital programme, it's the best value for money in the budget.
Build for the whole place, not just the new part. Ebbsfleet sits alongside established communities like Northfleet and Swanscombe, some facing far higher deprivation. Several organisations told us about a them-and-us feeling between old and new. Youth spaces can ease that or deepen it. Infrastructure brings people together when it's shaped by the people it's meant to serve, and pulls them apart when it isn't.
The timing of this work could not be more significant.
The National Youth Strategy is moving money closer to local areas, and the government plans to fund 1,000 new youth workers. On the Prime Minister's Civil Society Council, I've argued they should be based where young people already spend their time. When that funding comes, the areas best placed for it will be those with clear local need, evidence built on young people's own voices, and a costed plan. Ebbsfleet now has all three.
To every council planning its next phase of growth: ask young people first, and keep asking them. And to every young person who has been told there's nowhere for them: there should be, and we're working on it.
Saeed Atcha MBE DL is founder and chief executive of Youth Leads UK and a member of the Prime Minister's Civil Society Council
