Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what discussions officials in her Department have had with representatives of (a) chambers of commerce and (b) local authorities on registering as gateway providers to enable local small and medium sized enterprises to use the Kickstart Scheme.

Officials from the Department for Work and Pensions have had discussions with organisations and employers across the country about involvement in the Kickstart Scheme. This includes the Scottish and Welsh governments, mayoral combined authorities and local authorities and chambers of commerce.

We are delighted that these discussions have resulted in more than 900 organisations being approved as Gateways for the Kickstart Scheme including around 35 members of the British Chambers of Commerce network. There are also over 100 Local Authorities approved to be Kickstart Gateways. We closed applications to organisations seeking to be a new Gateway.

Since 3^rd February we have also removed the 30 job minimum requirement for direct applications to Kickstart. This will make the scheme accessible to even more employers – especially smaller ones - giving them choice about whether to apply direct or via one of the approved Kickstart Gateways. We continue to engage with employers to maintain the high interest in the scheme with over 180,000 jobs approved to date.

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.