Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average length of time is between a job being approved through the government’s Kickstart scheme and the placement beginning in (a) England, (b) the North East and (c) Newcastle East constituency in the latest period for which that data is available.

When applying for funding from the Department for Work and Pensions’ Kickstart Scheme, employers are able to choose when the funded jobs start in the life of the scheme. This means that the time between approval and start can vary greatly and will greatly affect any averages. A number of processes must be completed before a job can be started including the signing of a grant funding agreement and the referring of an eligible young person.

The average time between a job being made available for a young person to apply for and a young person starting in that position is less than 28 days. This is based on all jobs made available for young people to apply to since the Kickstart Scheme launched until the 20^th May. This figure is the national average; we are currently unable to break this information down to the regional level or below.

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.