County Youth Forum – November 2025

County Youth Forum is a platform that brings together young people from across the county to share their views, discuss issues that matter to them, and influence decision-making at a local level. It’s an opportunity for youth voices to be heard and for schools to support their learners in developing leadership, communication, and civic engagement skills. On Tuesday 25^th November, 55 young people from 11 Secondary schools and YEPs forums attended CYF in the Council Chambers, Pontypridd and participated fully in debates and consultation work.

Senior Officers within Education, Councillor Lewis and Councillor Harris attended and listened to young people discussing politics and democracy in RCT, including the running of a ‘mock’ Council meeting. They also facilitated a debate on healthy eating in schools. Our young people asked challenging and intelligent questions of Senior Officers and have been invited to attend the Councils Scrutiny meeting in December to further the conversation and ensure their views are heard at a higher level and influence policy going forward.

One thing you learnt today that stood out to you:

the active development to enforce healthy eating in schools

• Making new inclusive menus
• Multiple people are involved in making decisions I learned during the forum
• how others think and share their opinion’s
• I learned how the structure of the council works and how elections, and meetings in the chambers
• The council are trying to improve secondary school menus making them both healthy and enjoyable
• That ik am confident ik what democracy means
• Cost of the food we eat, and the amount of money that fund different departments

Did anything surprise or challenge you?

• the budget shares over the frontline services
• How much money is spent for certain things
• That the people in charge were actually listening and writing stuff down
• I was surprised by my fellow members, opinions and shared thoughts.
• Most questions were deflected back to contributors
• The amount of money there actually is to spend in RCT

Are there any improvements that we can make?

• more time to discuss and get questions answered
• No
• Doing more discussions with us so we can have a decision on stuff that changes for us
• I would only request that we have more time during the next session.
• Approvements to the food in school – make more eye catching as people eat with their eyes
• No improvements