Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will publish the data for Kickstart scheme (a) applications, (b) business registrations and (c) placement starts for young people seeking work by (i) constituency and (ii) local authority.

As of 2 November, there have been over 23,570 applications approved for funding from the Kickstart Scheme. These applications have come from over 900 Gateway organisations and over 14,000 employers and include 304,000 approved jobs. Employers and Gateways can make multiple applications, and the number of employers included within gateway applications is not included in these figures.

We are unable to provide the number of applications and business registrations by parliamentary constituency or local authority, however we have provided, in the attached document, tables listing the number of jobs made available for young people to apply for and jobs started on the Kickstart Scheme by Local Authority and Parliamentary Constituency. The figures provided are correct as of 2 November 2021 and these figures have been rounded according to departmental standards. There has been a delay in answering this question as additional time was needed to quality assure the information provided.

Job locations are as reported by the employer on the Job Placement Template. In some cases, employers will report the address of their head office rather than the precise location of the job.

The information provided shows the location of the job not the location of the young person who has started the job. Given we do not know where the remote job is being undertaken, we have removed remote jobs from the geographical breakdowns and have placed in a separate remote category.

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.