Youth workers, students and teenagers gave impassioned pleas to save youth services from swingeing cuts at an emotional Council meeting yesterday.

At the meeting, Bradford Council’s decision-making executive moved forward with its plans to slash £89 million from its budget over the next two years.

The proposals include cutting funding for youth services by 79 per cent, a move which would save £3.2m from 2014 to 2016.

So many protesters turned up to make their voices heard that the meeting had to be moved from a committee room at City Hall to the larger Council Chamber.

Addressing them, Councillor David Green, leader of the Labour-run Council, mounted a scathing attack on the coalition Government, accusing it of disproportionately hitting the north of England with cut-backs.

He urged the protesters to complain to their MPs, and said: “You need to ask yourself why we are being targeted.”

One youth worker was in tears as she described what job cuts would mean to the district.

She said: “If you get rid of people like us, who are committed, you won’t get it again. If you lose that commitment, passion and drive, you won’t be able to get it back.”

Sixteen-year-old Jordan Wilson received a round of applause from the packed chamber after he described how Shipley youth cafe helped steer him away from a troubled background.

He said: “I’m now doing a construction course in bricklaying.”

And Councillor Mohammad Shabbir (Ind) said he would not be in his position today if it had not been for the help of the youth services.

He spoke warmly about his “direct experience of being benefitted from the youth service”, which started when he was 13.

He said: “I’m here as a 42-year-old, working in the voluntary sector and as a councillor, directly as a result of the timely intervention of a youth worker.

“I still remember to this day what he did on that particular night.”

Coun Shabbir said it was time for the Council to stand up to the Government, and compared the local government cuts to a game of Buckaroo.

He said: “You keep putting things on to the donkey and eventually the donkey has to stick a leg out. It has to say enough is enough.”

Coun Green said: “Nobody in this room has said anything that I think any of the elected members of the Council would argue with.

“We have been looking at this budget for six months now and the youth service is one of the services we have thought long and hard about.”

But Coun Green said the authority was keen to hear people’s suggestions for making alternative cut-backs to save front-line services.

He urged people to get involved in the three-month consultation which will be held before the budget is finalised in February.

He said: “The Council does listen and we will continue to work with all those involved to find ways of protecting front-line services, not just the youth service.”

The executive then voted unanimously to take the cost-cutting plan to the next stage – a three-month public consultation.

The plan also includes proposals to axe almost 700 Council jobs, close seven children’s centres and withdraw adult social care day centres.