Concerns that there may not be enough volunteers to make the new style of youth service work in Wiltshire have been raised.

 Laura Mayes, Wiltshire Council’s portfolio holder for children’s services, chaired a Devizes Area Board meeting at Devizes School on Monday, which followed a youth fair, to launch a community-led model for youth services.

She said she was aware that people had high expectations but the youth service of the future would be very different to what had existed.

Earlier this year Wiltshire Council made nearly all of its youth workers redundant but created the new posts of community youth officers.

Cllr Mayes said Sally Willox, who has the role in Devizes, would be pivotal in making the new style of youth service work.

Both Cllr Mayes and Mrs Willox told the audience, largely of groups which offer youth activities with a few young people, that in the future youngsters would be consulted more about what activities they wanted.

But they would have to find adult volunteers to run clubs.

They said it was likely to be at least six months before the new way of running youth services was up and running.

Afterwards Devizes town councillor Andy Johnson, who was part of the Devizes Youth Advisory Group, said: “I have done a lot of volunteering and been involved in youth work for some time and usually it just comes down to a few people in any town.

“I am not sure there are enough volunteers out there in the community to make this work. I hope I am wrong but I am not feeling confident.

“As far as I am concerned all of this should have been put in place before the youth clubs were closed.”

Teenager Rosie Mullins, who was also part of the now disbanded youth advisory group, hit out at Cllr Mayes for ripping apart the service in the county and asked why it was taking so long to put something new in place.

Cllr Mayes said she had spent a lot of time explaining the situation to Miss Mullins and finally refused to allow her to ask any more questions.

Afterwards Miss Mullins, 18, said: “I thought she was patronising and pretty much just wanted to shut me up.

“I wanted to find out what was going to happen in the future if young people have a problem but no longer have a youth worker for support.”

Miss Willox said: “I will network and get myself known with organisations, and will help co-ordinate positive activities for young people.”