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 19 July 2018 to Question 163141 on National Citizen Service Trust, whether the contracts with National Citizen Service providers included a provision for the repayment of funding by the provider in the event of unfilled places.

Pursuant to my answer of 19 July, current contracts with providers of the NCS programme do not include provision for repayment of funding in the event of unfilled places. However, the NCS Trust does recover all advance payments to providers that are not spent on delivering the NCS programme.

Reducing the risk of unfilled places is a priority for DCMS. The NCS Trust with DCMS support, are developing measures to improve the quality and flexibility of the commissioning model; enabling changes which will allow participation volumes to flex throughout the year in response to demand and so bring down the number of unfilled places.