Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Kickstart scheme placements for young people have been (a) approved, (b) advertised and (c) started in each (i) nation, (ii) region and (iii) business sector since the beginning of that scheme.

As of the 26^th October, almost 94,000 young people have started a Kickstart job.

With the current pace of starts, we are confident that in early November over 100,000 young people will have started in a Kickstart job. This is an amazing achievement with the first jobs having started only a year ago. We will continue to offer Kickstart jobs to many thousands more.

As of the 26^th of October, over 213,000 jobs have been made available for young people to apply to through the scheme and over 304,000 jobs have been approved for funding.

From 28/09/2021 to 25/10/2021, on average over 6,700 Kickstart jobs were made available each week, and on average over 3,400 young people started a Kickstart job each week.

Below are tables listing the number of Kickstart jobs which have been made available and started by young people to date by geographical area of Great Britain and work sector. The figures used are correct as of the 25^th of October and these figures have been rounded according to departmental standards.

Jobs made available and starts quoted here include some unfunded Kickstart jobs. Over time, some previously approved jobs have been 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.

Table 1- Kickstart jobs made available and started by location.

Table 2- Kickstart jobs made available and started by sector.