Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reasons had only 69,000 young people begun jobs under the Kickstart scheme as of 31 July 2021 compared with the target of 250,000 taking job under that scheme.

Since Kickstart jobs commenced in November, we are pleased that by 8 September 2021 over 69,000 young people had started in jobs created by the scheme. There was an average of 2,800 more starting each week between 18/08/2021 and 08/09/2021. We are confident that we will can continue to fill tens of thousands over the coming months. Employers across Great Britain have provided thousands of roles so that young people can choose a job that is right for them. There are also jobs opening up for young people in the wider economy as it recovers from the global pandemic, between August 2020 and August 2021 there was a 381,000 increase in pay rolled employees under 25 years old.

A Kickstart job can start at any time over the lifetime of the scheme and some employers choose to delay the commencement of roles for a variety of reasons. Our data indicates that between the 27/07/2021 and 08/09/2021 the average time between receipt of an application by DWP to confirmation of its approval was 14 days. Within the same period the average time between receipt of an application and the job being made available for young people to apply for was 43 days. A significant portion of this time includes engagement with employers to return grant funding agreements and job description templates promptly so that applications can be progressed.

We are ensuring as many eligible young people as need it get a chance to experience the Kickstart Scheme. We are promoting vacancies on various platforms, including social media and using initiatives such as Kickstart Quickstart to match young people to jobs in some cases on the same day they are referred to the scheme. In addition, Jobcentres are inviting Kickstart employers into their centres to job match Kickstart opportunities with young people.

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. Work is ongoing to improve the quality of information available for the programme.