Youth unemployment ‘hotspots' to get early support

In a speech at the CBI’s Jobs Summit, Nick Clegg said the government had found the country’s 20 areas with the highest rates of long-term youth unemployment and the lowest rates of return.

In these areas businesses that take on young people will be offered subsidies of up to £2,275 for each young person who has been unemployed for six months, compared with the nine-month restriction in the rest of the country.

Clegg said: “Youth unemployment is a national problem but it is more acute in certain places. Maybe inner city areas with high levels of disadvantage; rural communities where businesses are struggling to take people on; former mining towns at the sharp end of industrial decline.

“Whatever the reason, these are the toughest parts of the country to be young, down, and out.”

Under the plans, job centres in these 20 areas will be able to use the wage subsidy before young people are referred to the Work Programme.

“When you feel like you’re banging your head against a brick wall when you live in an area where opportunities are already few and far between, another 12 weeks of rejection letters, of being cut off, of sitting at home waiting, worrying; that can seriously knock the stuffing out of you, making it extremely difficult to pick yourself up,” Clegg added.

Clegg said the 20 areas sit in the Midlands, the north of England, South Wales, parts of Scotland and he hoped that the acceleration of the Youth Contract in these areas could help balance the “north-south divide”.

The 20 hotspots are:

• Blaenau Gwent
• Hartlepool
• South Tyneside
• Merthyr Tydfil
• Clackmannanshire
• Redcar and Cleveland
• Hull
• Middlesbrough
• Wolverhampton
• Sunderland
• Sandwell
• Walsall
• Rotherham
• North Ayrshire
• Dudley
• Birmingham
• Caerphilly
• West Dunbartonshire
• Barnsley
• Northumberland