Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure children and young people from low income families are able to access opportunities with the National Citizen Service.

The National Citizen Service (NCS) is a universal programme that is available to all 15-17 year olds, and maintains a policy that no young person is prevented from taking part because of cost.

NCS is able to engage a diverse group of young people, over-indexing in participation rates compared to the national population for certain priority groups. In 2019, 23% of participants were on free school meals (compared to 14% nationally) and 16.3% were living in Opportunity Areas (compared to 14.4% nationally).

NCS ensures that young people from low income families can access the programme through various measures:

• Bursary schemes, which cover 80% of the participant contribution, reducing it to £10 or, in some cases, entirely. In Summer 2021, over 10,000 young people accessed a bursary.

• The NCS Inclusion Fund, which enables NCS’s network of providers to remove barriers to taking part in the programme, supporting young people with transport, food, and kit. In 2021, almost 300 young people benefited from the fund.

• A dedicated community engagement team focused on increasing accessibility by considering differing levels of deprivation and connecting with local youth organisations and Local Authorities.

Nonetheless, there is a perceived barrier for some. 2021 survey results from 1,640 young people show that for those not interested in participating in NCS, 7% cited cost as the reason. This is significantly lower than other reasons including wanting to spend time doing other things and concerns about coronavirus. NCS remains committed to removing these perceived barriers and continues to develop approaches to overcoming them.