Not one Cheshire West child was remanded or sentenced to custody in 2025-26, the youth justice plan says. Knife possession arrests held at 26 for a second year.
Not a single child from Cheshire West and Chester was remanded or sentenced to custody in 2025-26, according to the council’s youth justice report.
The figure is in the refreshed Youth Justice Plan for Cheshire, which went to the council’s Cabinet on Wednesday 11 November (Cabinet report). The plan covers one shared youth justice service for four councils: Cheshire West and Chester, Cheshire East, Halton and Warrington.
The Cheshire West figures
The report gives these figures for the borough in 2025-26:
- 0 children remanded or sentenced to custody all year
- 37 first time entrants to the justice system, meaning children given their first caution or conviction
- 26 children arrested for knife possession, the same as the year before and down from 36 in 2023-24
The full plan says Cheshire West was “a slight outlier” on first time entrants, because its number fell slightly while the other three areas rose (Youth Justice Plan 2026-27 refresh). Elsewhere, the rises were mostly down to a change in national police guidance. Offences that once got an informal community resolution now more often get a formal caution, which counts.
The council received £24,402 from the Ministry of Justice in 2025-26 towards the cost of remanding children. It spent none of it, the plan’s remand table shows. Of the four areas, only Halton had children remanded: three of them, for a total of 307 nights.
Across Cheshire
Serious youth violence in Cheshire ran at 3.6 offences per 10,000 children in 2025-26, the report says. That compares with a regional average of 6.3 and a national average of 5.1.
The report also says fewer than 10% of Cheshire children diverted away from prosecution went on to reoffend within 12 months.
A film made by young people in Winsford
The report singles out a film called Life Through Our Lens, made with children working with the service. It says the film has won national recognition and is being nominated for a Local Government Chronicle award. One child has since been given paid work as an actor in another film.
Two Winsford children who helped make it are being invited to share their experience with the town’s NEET taskforce, which works on young people not in education, employment or training.
What the service plans next
The plan’s priorities for the next 12 months include:
- a Victims Advisory Board, to improve support for victims of youth crime
- a partnership with the Skill Mill, giving young people under youth justice supervision paid, supervised work placements
- a Cheshire and Merseyside remand consortium, with specialist foster homes as an alternative to remanding children into custody
What it means for you
Most of this is about how the service works, not something residents need to act on. The figures give a clearer picture of youth crime in the borough than headlines alone.
Cabinet was asked to endorse the plan and recommend it to Full Council, which must approve it. The plan was already sent to the national Youth Justice Board on 30 June, which the rules allow when council approval comes later.
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