YOUTH services in Bury could do more to stretch teenagers to their full potential.

Young people should get a greater say in how clubs and societies are run, and should have the option of more meaningful activities.

The points were made in an Ofsted report published on Bury youth service this week, which concludes that the service is "adequate" and gives "adequate" value for money.

Service bosses say that necessary changes are already being made, as part of a radical overhaul of activities for young people.

Resources are well distributed across the borough, and the service works well with other organisations, according to inspector Harriet Gore.

However, the service was criticised for providing too many activities that lack direct input from young people.

Ms Gore, who visited the borough in November and December last year, said: "Too much work is insufficiently challenging with insufficient emphasis on outcomes for young people.

"Generally, young people are not adequately involved in planning, evaluation and decision-making in their own youth work programmes."

However, real strengths do exist with groups such as the borough's Youth Cabinet providing a valuable forum for personal development, said Ms Gore.

"Standards are adequate overall with young people achieving particularly high standards when they are involved in shaping provision," she said.

"The quality of youth work practice is mostly satisfactory with a few examples of very good work.

"Young people generally relate very positively to youth workers, who are enthusiastic and know them well."

Youth service manager Barbara Lewis said that staff were still adapting to a change in priorities to meet new national targets.

In addition, she explained, the service had recently been restructured to provide six centres of excellence around the borough.

Mrs Lewis said: "We have gone from being a provider to young people to being an enabler, a role that requires us to bring young people on board.

"We have had to start from scratch, identifying and developing new structures, which has been hard.

"The building blocks are there, and if this report had been in another six months, we would probably have had an excellent' rating."