Asked by: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much funding his Department has provided for the renovation of Jobcentre sites in each financial year since 2020.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Funding allocations for renovation of the DWP Estate are not disaggregated between back office and Jobcentre sites Therefore, it is not possible to separately identify Jobcentre renovation costs.
Asked by: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Jobcentre sites are temporarily closed.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
As of 30 April 2024, there are 6 Jobcentres that are temporarily closed.
Asked by: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of staff in his Department's took a leave of absence due to mental ill health by (a) gender, (b) age and (c) UK region between1 May 2023 and 11 April 2024.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Please see the attached document for the total number of people who have worked in DWP and taken at least one leave of absence at some point between 1st May 2023 and 31st March 2024. It includes those who left the department during this period. Figures for April 2024 are not yet available.
Asked by: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help broaden access to work experience for disadvantaged young people.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Work experience is an important aspect of the support pupils receive to follow rewarding learning and training pathways which lead to fulfilling careers.
The department works with The Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC) to support secondary schools to provide pupils with multiple interactions with employers from year 7 to year 13 in line with Gatsby Benchmark 6, Experiences of the Workplace. The department has asked CEC to drive this agenda forward at pace to increase workplace opportunities, targeting pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, in response to evidence that these pupils are less likely to access work experience opportunities than their peers. In the latest annual data, 64% of institutions fully achieved the experiences of the workplace benchmark, which is a 12% increase from the year before.
The CEC Careers Hub network has been asked to use a proportion of their Hub Delivery Fund to stimulate meaningful employer-led activities to increase the quantity and quality of opportunities for young people to engage in encounters of the workplace with a focus on alternative provision, special educational needs and disabilities and Pupil Referral Units across all year groups.
In addition, £1.9 million has been invested to support Careers Hubs to offer workplace experiences for up to 15,000 economically disadvantaged young people, including virtual workplace experience pilots for more than 1,000 schools in coastal and rural communities, providing access to wider national networks of employers outside their local community.