Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the role of local government in supporting the Government's jobs and skills recovery plan following the COVID-19 pandemic.

On 8th July the Chancellor announced measures across a range of targeted work-based training offers to support people to build the skills they need to get into work. This amounts to investment of £1.6 billion in employment support schemes, which will substantially expand existing provision. This includes £111 million to triple traineeships for 16-24 year olds will help more young people gain the skills to progress to apprenticeships, further education and other employment. We are providing employers with £2,000 for each young person they hire as an apprentice and offering £1,500 for each new apprentice hired aged over 25. We are also providing £101 million for school and college leavers to study high value Level 2 and 3 courses when there are not employment opportunities available to them, providing funding of £17 million to almost triple the number of Sector-Based Work Academy placements, and giving the National Careers Service an extra £32 million funding so it can provide careers advice to 269,000 more customers.

Through our Plan for Jobs we have set out how we will support people to stay in and access good jobs as we drive forward our recovery. This includes investing £2 billion to directly support hundreds of thousands of young people through the Kickstart Scheme which will provide fully subsidised jobs for young people across the country.

As part of raising the participation age legislation local authorities have duties to track all academic age 16 and 17 year olds, identify those not in education, employment or training or at risk of becoming so and supporting them to re-engage in education or training. This includes a September guarantee where local authorities need to ensure that all year 11 students and year 12 students on a one year course have a suitable offer of education or training for the following September. We are working closely with local authorities to support these duties and monitor September guarantee offers.

Across these areas the government recognises the need to work closely with local government to support these various interventions and is proactively taking forward conversations with local government on delivery of these programmes.