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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to minimise the risk of paying for unfilled places with new partner contracts for the National Citizen Service programme.

We are working closely with NCS Trust on the design of future provider contracts. Reducing the amount spent on NCS unfilled places is a priority as it will deliver greater value for money for the taxpayer. As new contracts will not come into effect until 2020 we have also taken steps including introducing measures on unfilled places in the NCS Trust performance management framework.