Recommendation 17

The Department requires employers to provide employability support to Kickstart participants alongside their jobs, an approach it hopes will make participants more employable in the future. The Department gives employers £1,500 per participant to cover the costs of providing this employability support, along with other relevant set-up costs. The Department does not specify the employability support employers should provide, but described it as “a kind of wrap-around support in helping the young person, as well as having the placement, to gain additional skills as part of that placement” and that the types of support provided can be different but have to be of high quality.69 The Department told us that it considers what employers’ say about the employment support they plan to offer, when it assesses their applications to create Kickstart jobs.70 The National Audit Office also reported that 70% of Kickstart jobs filled had been offered through third-party Gateways; and the Department acknowledged that it had no visibility of how Gateways were distributing the £1,500 payments for employability support, or how Gateways were applying checks on employability support.71 When we put it to the Department that Gateways could have been empowered to withhold the £1,500 payment until they knew employers were providing a good level of employment support, the Department said this was an interesting point and a question “to learn from”.72 It is also unclear whether the Department is able to claw back employability support funding where this has been used inappropriately, though the Permanent Secretary said that he was not aware of any situations where money had been clawed back.73