Telford & Wrekin Council to offer 100 employment opportunities under Kickstart Scheme

The Council has been hailed by the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) as the first locally-based employer in Shropshire to begin recruiting for the placements.

The first young people are expecting to join Telford & Wrekin Council by March.

The aim will be to give young people the chance to learn new and transferable skills as well as provide access to online learning to help young people prepare for all aspects of employment. The intention is that all Kickstart employees will be ‘work-ready’ by the time they finish the programme, supporting them on their future career journeys.

The Kickstart scheme was announced by the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, as part of his Plan for Jobs. It enables employers to offer six-month job placements for 16-24-year-olds claiming Universal Credit and at risk of long-term unemployment, with their wages paid by the Government for up to 25 hours per week.

Mr Sunak’s vision is for hundreds of thousands of new, subsidised jobs to be created across the country.

Cllr Shirley Reynolds Cabinet Member for Children, Young People, Education and Lifelong Learning said: “We are extremely proud to be recruiting 100 employees through this unique initiative to provide opportunities to kickstart the careers of young people.”

Ben Vaughan, Employer Manager for DWP in Shopshire and Telford & Wrekin said “The DWP are really excited to be working with our colleagues at Telford & Wrekin Council to deliver the Kickstart scheme. They will be creating a broad range of vacancies across their different departments that I know will be very appealing for our younger jobseekers. Their Kickstart jobs are the first locally led vacancies to appear in Shropshire for our work coaches to begin supporting their jobseekers to apply for, and we have already had a significant amount of interest in them.”

Placements will be available across a broad range of service areas, from leisure and teaching to heritage management and more. The Council has committed to offering the candidates the opportunity for a second six-month placement to gain wider experience.
The move underlines the commitment of Telford & Wrekin Council to support young people, whose employment prospects have been particularly badly hit in the past year, largely due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the UK economy.

While unemployment in Telford & Wrekin is below regional and UK rates, there has been a worrying growth in youth unemployment which is now proportionately higher that across the West Midlands and England.

Telford & Wrekin’s youth unemployment rate, at 8.4% is above both regional and national figures (England 7.4%, West Midlands 8.3%). In contrast the district’s overall unemployment rate of 6.2%, is below that in the West Midlands (7.3%) and England (6.3%).

In Telford & Wrekin there were 6,925 people aged 16 and over claiming unemployment related benefits in October 2020, a reduction of 190 people - or 2.7% - from the month before.

There were 1,615 young people aged 16-24 in Telford and Wrekin claiming unemployment related benefits in October 2020, five less than the month before, equivalent to a fall of 0.3% from the month before.

Click here for further information on the scheme.