On the eve of the biggest council shake-up in a generation, Local Government Minister John Healey said: “The acid test will be whether these councils deliver their promises including better services, leadership and achieving more for less.” Six months after the unitary Durham County Council came into being, The Northern Echo continues its year-long series taking an in-depth look at whether the council is passing that test. Mark Tallentire reports.

DURHAM County Council is undoubtedly committed to making life better for children and young people.

On April 1 – its first day in office, it made swimming at public pools free to everyone under 19 – extending a Government initiative further than many other local authorities in the region.

Since then, the council has become one of only two to make school meals free to all primary school children.

Looking to the future, there is talk that bus fares could be abolished for under-19s.

The council has beacon status for school improvement, with rapidly rising GCSE results taking the county’s score above the national average.

Schools chiefs are so admired that they are in demand to tour the country, giving advice to less successful colleagues.

But are taxpayers and children and young people satisfied?

When The Northern Echo met a group of teenagers to find out what they thought about living and growing up in County Durham, all said there must be more for young people to do, more places for them to go.

Some believed the council spent more money on wealthy areas, ignoring deprived neighbourhoods.

The first message is getting through. Last month, the council’s executive cabinet received a report from its children and young people’s scrutiny committee, chaired by Councillor Jan Blakey, which identified places to go and things to do as a key priority.

Officials hope the second could be addressed by the shift to unitary status – with a single council delivering equality of services across the county.

But – crucially – many of the young people felt to fulfil their ambitions they would eventually have to leave County Durham.

Ryan Gamble, 15, said: “You can learn here but everybody wants the perfect job, and there just isn’t anything round here.”

Dale Cullen, 16, added: “There’s so much talent round here. But there are no opportunities to use it.”

It’s a problem acknowledged by officials and politicians: producing skilled school leavers, bright college students or high achieving university graduates could all be for nothing if they join the brain drain to the South-East or larger cities across the North.

Councillor Joe Armstrong, chairman of the council’s overview and scrutiny management board, says aspirations must be raised.

“If you look at employment, we’ve lost a lot of manufacturing.

We’re moving into hitech industries and we’ve got cracking universities here.

But a lot of our graduates move away. That’s something we’ve got to reverse.

“We need to break out of the cycle of worklessness. The aspirational part of this is very important. We’ve got to give a pointer to what’s possible.”

David Williams, the council’s corporate director of children and young people’s services, is confident the changes needed can be achieved.

He counts off some of the areas his super-department, which emerged from a shakeup of the old fiefdoms of education and social services, is now responsible for. The list is seemingly endless: schools, school meals, home to school transport, school achievement, careers advice, teenage pregnancy, Sure Start centres, youth offending.

Then, he offers a snapshot of some of its achievements: beacon status, glowing reports on its fostering and adoption services, large drops in youth offending, a strong record on safeguarding.

In many of its key responsibilities, Mr Williams’ department is flying high.

Building Schools for the Future, the largest school building programme since Victorian times, will see every County Durham secondary school rebuilt or remodelled – at a cost of £500m.

The huge scheme is already under way, with high achieving Durham Johnston School rebuilt, and builders on site at Shotton Hall, Easington, and Sedgefield.

Next year, £110m will be invested in the project, providing a major boost to the county’s economy.

Primary schools are also getting in on the cash, with two to three having been rebuilt each year since 2006.

A £15m project to rebuild Aycliffe Secure Services – also known as Aycliffe Young People’s Centre – will, Mr Williams says, make it one of the best of its kind in the whole country.

Admittedly, schools chiefs have taken a lot of flak recently, particularly over £75m plans to close six secondary schools in Consett, Stanley and Durham City. They would be replaced by three newbuild academies, co-sponsored by the authority and outside educational body: a Durham University-led consortium for Consett and Durham, and, for Stanley, New College Durham.

Mr Williams is accustomed to this debate and he bats it off relatively straightforwardly, saying it’s inevitable that large capital schemes with which people are unfamiliar will attract “uncertainty”.

But he holds on to “what we’re getting for young people”.

The economic conundrum is less easily dismissed.

“If we achieve what we want to achieve as a county council, I’m absolutely certain County Durham will be a place where young people will want to choose to stay, and people from other places will want to move to,” Mr Williams insists.

“We want to create opportunities for young people.

We’re doing that in terms of education.”

Councillor Claire Vasey, cabinet member for children and young people’s services, adds: “We’ve got to improve education and we are, year on year. Once we’ve got that skilled workforce, surely that will attract employers.”

For the sake of everything that has been achieved in children and young people’s services, the future prosperity of County Durham and the children and young people themselves, Coun Vasey and Mr Williams will not be the only ones hoping so.