Youth leadership is a key theme of Aiming High, the Government's ten-year youth strategy, published in July 2007.

Aiming High sets out a specific commitment to establish a National Body for Youth Leadership (NBYL). This would enable those organisations supporting young people's leadership "to share best practice on approaches to supporting young people's leadership, and to increase the number of young people who benefit from these opportunities."

In December 2007, the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) commissioned Changemakers to conduct a feasibility study into the proposed NBYL. Around 50 organisations were involved in a series of activities and events in the Spring of 2008, and many more contributed ideas and experience to the final report which was submitted to the DCSF in April 2008.

In February 2008 the DCSF published Young People: Leading Change, an interim statement on its plans for investing in youth leadership, in which it announced that the NBYL would have a budget of around £6.26 million to March 2011.

Following further consultation with stakeholders, the DCSF carried out a procurement exercise in the Autumn of 2008. In February 2009, it was announced that a consortium led by The National Youth Agency had been selected to deliver the NBYL.