Young people are such an important part of our party. Not only do we offer an army of eager campaigners and young candidates, we also help speak up for youth issues and ensure the party has this voice on things it may otherwise overlook.

The Young Liberals are committed to ensuring that the voices of all young people are heard and represented, and this is why we need your help.

At our Spring Conference in Glasgow, we passed a motion to explore increasing the age range of our membership.

The way it works at the moment is that you are automatically a member of the Young Liberals if you are under 26. This is significantly lower than our European counterparts, who’s youth wings tend to encompass everyone under 35.

We feel this limits our ability to represent the issues facing young professionals and those who don’t attend University. This is due to those people who leave University taking a step back from the Young Liberals, failing to see how we are relevant to them given they’ll age out soon anyhow.

The Young Liberals should be representing all young people, because we all suffer from being stuck as generation rent, from having to without adequate mental health services, and from being exploited through long-term unpaid internships.

These issues don’t simply go away when you turn 26.

Over recent years we’ve seen ourselves become more and more focused on student issues, simply due to the fact our main demographic is more likely to be university students than anything else.

There are thousands of party members who are struggling with the same issues who we should be representing, but who are left without a home due to the arbitrary cut off point.

We want to change that; we want to give these people a home!

We’re consulting on raising the age range of the Young Liberals to 29, to ensure we bring in the voices of young professionals, that we retain key skills and keep vital institutional memory in our organisation for longer.

These changes would require an amendment to be made to the Federal Party Constitution and are not something we are taking lightly.

That’s why we want to here from you.

Please take this short survey and let us know what you think of our proposals: https://digitallibdems.typeform.com/to/NoUDEH

Whether you agree or disagree with our proposals, I think all of us have a shared interest in seeing the Party’s youth wing grow and flourish.

I hope we can come together and find a way to make that happen.

* Callum is a member of the Welsh Liberal Democrat Board. He was previously been Co-Chair of the Young Liberals and worked for Jane Dodds during her time in Parliament.