Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 2 April 2019 to Question 238396, whether all participants in the National Citizens Service are charged the maximum £50 sign-up fee.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Not all participants are charged the maximum £50 sign up fee. Partial and full bursaries are available to ensure the programme is accessible to every young person who wants a place.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 25 Feb 2019 to Question 223803, what the final (a) participation and (b) completion figures for the National Citizenship Service programme were for 2018; and if will publish the (i) original and (ii) revised Government targets for each year since 2011.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The final participation and completion figures for the National Citizen Service programme in 2018 are undergoing compliance checks and will be published on gov.uk once they are finalised.
Government targets have been agreed annually between the sponsoring Government Department and the NCS Trust in line with NCS Trust projections of demand. The table attached shows annual targets and participation ceilings.
A maximum participation ceiling was allocated to NCS in the 2015 Spending Review to ensure that no young people were turned away from the programme. This was not a participation target. The ceiling was revised downwards in the 2017 revised Spending Review settlement.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 11 October 2018 to Question 176383, how much funding has been released from dormant bank accounts to support young people.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
As part of the Civil Society Strategy, the Government committed to working with the National Lottery Community Fund to allocate £90 million from dormant bank accounts to a new, independent organisation to support young people furthest away from the labour market. Last week, the Youth Futures Foundation (YFF) launched and announced its Founding Chair, Joe Montgomery.
Over the coming months, YFF will set out its strategy for using this funding to support the most disadvantaged young people into employment. Funding is supporting small, grassroot youth organisations working with young people Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET) or at risk of becoming NEET, to build their organisational capacity and strengthen local partnerships.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 26 March 2019 to Question 235376 on Voluntary Work: Young People, what the sources are of past non-public income generated to fund NCS and the forecasted £3 million of income for the upcoming financial year.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Historically, the main source of non-public income generated for NCS has been the £50 sign-up fee. A small amount of income has occasionally come from other sources, such as corporate sponsorships.
The forecasted circa £3 million income for the upcoming financial year will be generated from sign-up fees.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what the source of funding is for the £10 million brand refresh for the National Citizen Service; and whether he can confirm that no government funding will be spent on this contract.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
To date, over 500,000 young people have taken part in the NCS programme. The most recently published evaluation has found that 82% of young people felt more positive about people from different backgrounds, and participants are more likely to use their time to help others after NCS[1]. Marketing is a key recruitment driver for NCS, ensuring that more young people across the country benefit from the programme.
The brand refresh is one part of the overall marketing and creative services tender which includes communications planning, creative strategy, brand platform, experience, advertising campaign development, and content production. The £10m figure was stated in a NCS Trust procurement document as an upper limit over 4 years. The actual cost of the contract is likely to be around £1m per year, for 4 years of the contract.
The NCS Trust is forecast to self-generate c. £3m income in the upcoming financial year. The brand refresh element of the marketing and creative services contract in question will be paid from those funds and we can confirm that no government funding will be spent on this element of the contract. The remainder of the contract will be funded by Government funding.
[1] This figure is based on the 2016 programme evaluation, which can be found here. The 2017 evaluation report is currently being finalised.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 25 February 2019 to Question 223803 on Voluntary Work: Young People, if the Government will publish the (a) annual and (b) completed participation figures for 2018 once they are confirmed.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government will publish the annual and completed NCS 2018 participation figures on gov.uk once they are confirmed.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many teenagers have (a) commenced and (b) graduated a National Citizenship Service programme in each of the last four years; and what the Government's target was for participation in that programme since 2011.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
| 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 |
Govt target1 | 10,000 | 30,000 | 50,000 | 66,433 | 90,000 | 100,000 | 101,000 | 100,000 |
Annual participants | 8,434 | 26,003 | 39,566 | 57,789 | 75,605 | 92,996 | 99,179 | TBC2 |
Completed | 7,140 | 22,245 | 37,266 | 51,512 | 68,762 | 87,266 | 90,010 | TBC2 |
1 Government targets are for participation, not completion.
2 Final participation figures for 2018 will be confirmed in due course.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to Answer of 18 February 2019 to Question 220945 on Voluntary Work: Young People, (a) how much and (b) what proportion of the total budget of the National Citizen Service the Department estimates it will spend on advertising and marketing in the financial year (i) 2019-20 and (ii) 2020-21.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Budgets are set annually for the NCS Programme in collaboration with the NCS Trust Board. We are in the process of setting the NCS budget for 2019/20. As per the NCS Act and Royal Charter, the NCS Annual Accounts, Business Plan and Annual Report are laid in Parliament.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what progress the Government has made on the renewal of the National Occupational Standards for Youth Work which expire in 2020.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government recognises the value of good youth work, this was underlined in the Civil Society Strategy published in August last year. We are aware that the National Occupational Standards are set to expire in 2020 and are discussing this with youth sector organisations.
Asked by: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 23 April 2018 to Question 135849 on National Citizen Service Trust, whether delivery partners will still be paid for unfilled places under the new proposed contracts for 2019.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Some NCS Delivery Partners are not responsible for managing the recruitment of young people to their programmes. These Delivery Partners are generally small, local non-profit organisations, so in order to protect them from undue financial risk, once the number of places being commissioned is confirmed by NCS Trust, payment for these places will be guaranteed.
For provider contracts that begin in 2020, NCS Trust has re-designed the way its Management Partners will be paid, in order to significantly reduce the amount spent on places which are not filled.
Delivery Partners managing their own recruitment are guaranteed payment for a proportion of their NCS commissioned places. This gives smaller, local organisations the financial security they need to get involved in NCS. The remaining places will only be paid for if they are filled. NCS Trust will only pay for unfilled places in a situation where a Delivery Partner does not recruit enough young people to cover the proportion of places that has been guaranteed. This allows NCS Trust to share risk with the youth and voluntary sector, so that small organisations can benefit from being part of the delivery chain.