Apprenticeships going to people already in work, says DWP director

Mark Fisher, social justice director at the Department for Work and Pensions, said at a National Housing Federation conference in Birmingham today that more work needed to be done on getting businesses to hire young and long-term unemployed people as apprentices.

The civil servant, who was giving a talk during a session on housing and employment, said: ‘I think we’ve got work to do, frankly, on the business case for employing young people, to sell it to business…

‘In my humble opinion, we still have too many apprenticeships going to people who are already in work and not enough apprenticeships going to people who are on that journey into [employment].’

He was responding to a question from a delegate from Midland Heart, who said she was ‘tired’ of employers boasting of the ‘40 or so’ apprentices they hire, instead of focusing on the thousands of vulnerable unemployed people who get turned down for a job.

It comes nearly four months after Inside Housing launched its Homes Work campaign, which aims to persuade the housing and construction sector to hire more apprentices.

By April, housing associations had pledged to provide more than 1,000 apprenticeships this year.