Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Kickstart placements have (a) been advertised and (b) commenced by young people in Wakefield constituency in the last year.

As of 27 June 2022, 420 jobs had been advertised and 220 had been commenced by young people in the Wakefield constituency.

As of 27 June 2022 nationally, there have been over 163,200 Kickstart jobs started by young people. The last Kickstart jobs were started by young people on 31 March 2022, and we expect the number of starts to increase further as employers report commencement of employment.

Notes section:

We have previously published the number of jobs approved and advertised as of 31 January 2022, here: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2022-01-31/114956. At that point, over 235,000 jobs had been advertised and over 305,000 had been approved. The Kickstart Scheme has now closed to employer applications and, as of March 2022, all approved jobs proceeding to the advertisement stage, have been advertised. As such, these totals will not increase further.

Attached are tables listing the number of Kickstart jobs which have been made available and started by young people to date by Local Authority and Parliamentary Constituency. The figures used are correct as of the 27 June 2022 and these figures have been rounded according to departmental standards.

It is important to note that the information provided shows the location of the job not the home location of the young person who has started the job. In some cases, employers will report the address of their head office rather than the precise location of the job where the young person is working.

Jobs made available (advertised) and job starts quoted here include some unfunded Kickstart jobs, these are included in our national total but are not included in our geographic breakdown. Also included in the Great Britain total are a small number of jobs made available (less than 100 in total) that have an unrecorded job location.

The number of approved jobs is defined as the number of jobs associated with approved applications recorded on the Kickstart application system on the date above. This total excludes approved jobs that have been withdrawn from the Kickstart Scheme by agreement with employers and gateways. This is generally because, over time, some previously approved jobs were removed where the employer chose not to follow up the application.

Although care is taken when processing and analysing Kickstart applications, referrals and starts, the data collected might be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system, which has been developed quickly.

The management information presented here has not been subjected to the usual standard of quality assurance associated with official statistics but is provided in the interests of transparency. Work is ongoing to improve the quality of information available for the programme.