Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Universal Credit claimants aged 18-24 who are in the Intensive Work Search regime accessed support from a Youth Hub in (a) May 2023 and (b) the most recent month for which data is available.

The DWP Youth Offer provides individually tailored Work Coach support to young people aged 16 to 24 who are in the Universal Credit Intensive Work Search group. This includes the Youth Employment Programme, Youth Employability Coaches and Youth Hubs across Great Britain. Young people are referred to the most appropriate part of the Youth Offer depending on their individual circumstances.

When a claimant enrols on the Youth Employment Programme or is referred to a Youth Hub or Youth Employability Coach they are classified as having started on the Youth Offer. We do not have a separate measure of engagement. The number of claimants referred to a Youth Hub in May 2023 was 1,100

Notes:

1. This data is produced from a manual process and although care is taken when processing and analysing Youth Hub referrals, the data collected might be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system which features manual data. Therefore, Youth Hub figures are likely to underestimate the number of young people who have received Youth Hub support.

1. Figures have been rounded to the nearest 100.

For wider information regarding the number of claimants who have been referred to a Youth Hub, I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to PQ 190115.