The criticism emerged from a summit organised by a group of leading youth organisations, including The National Youth Agency and the Association of Principal Youth and Community Officers, to discuss how best to stop gun, gang and knife crime.

A report produced following the summit concluded that the government should give more thought on how to encourage fresh approaches to tackling gun and knife crime.

The organisations said new thinking on dealing with the problem is being undermined by the government's national performance indicators and inspection regimes.

The summit also agreed solutions to violent crime must take the views of young people and their families more seriously. "Participation with young people is often tokenistic," the report says. "Young people's voices need to be heard, especially those of the hardest-to-reach young people as they often know the solutions."

The group also felt three-year government funding blocks were counter-productive in allowing successful interventions to come to fruition. "The current target culture can be perverse and there is too much pressure from central government to achieve youth justice targets," the report says. "There is a need for agencies to have space for creative work and initiatives."

Peta Halls, development officer for community safety and youth justice at The National Youth Agency (NYA), said the aim of the discussion was to come up with credible solutions to the problem of gang, gun and knife violence. "There was a feeling from The NYA and other organisations that these were issues we had to look at and it's something the other organisations were concerned about too," she said. "There was a need to do something collectively that sends a strong message."

The report will be sent out to key youth justice and youth work stakeholders during the next two weeks.