Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to ensure equal access to National Citizen Service programmes for disadvantaged young people.

I refer to an answer given to a recent parliamentary question 127585.

The National Citizen Service (NCS) is a universal programme that is available to all 15-17 year olds, and maintains a policy that no young person is prevented from taking part.

NCS is able to engage a diverse group of young people, over-indexing in participation rates compared to the national population for certain priority groups. In 2019, 23% of participants were on free school meals, 16.3% were living in Opportunity Areas, 29% were from BAME communities, and 6.2% had special educational needs or disabilities.

NCS ensures that disadvantaged young people can access the programme through various measures:

• Bursary schemes, which cover 80% of the participant contribution, reducing it to £10 or, in some cases, entirely. In Summer 2021, over 10,000 young people accessed a bursary.

• The NCS Inclusion Fund, which enables NCS’s network of providers to remove barriers to taking part in the programme, supporting young people with transport, food, and kit. In 2021, almost 300 young people benefited from the fund.

• A dedicated community engagement team focused on increasing accessibility by considering differing levels of deprivation and connecting with local youth organisations and Local Authorities.

NCS remains committed to removing these access barriers and continues to develop approaches to overcoming them.