Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the average length of time from Kickstart placement applications to Kickstart placement approvals.

Since the launch of the Kickstart Scheme we have made changes to the assessment process to enable a quicker turnaround of applications, whilst ensuring that we continue to protect taxpayer’s money through robust and fair procedures. We have over 400 staff deployed to process and approve Kickstart applications.

As of 16^th March 2021, the average actual time between the issuing of a grant agreement and the time the associated application was received by the department was around 21 days.

Although care is taken when processing and analysing Kickstart applications, referrals and starts, the data collected might be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system which has been developed quickly.

The management information presented here has not been subjected to the usual standard of quality assurance associated with official statistics, but is provided in the interests of transparency.