"Staggering" Numbers Of West Sussex Teenagers Aren't Engaging With Work Or With Training

Wednesday, 9 December 2020 18:15

By Karen Dunn, Local Democracy Reporter

Almost one in ten of all 16 and 17-year-olds in West Sussex are out of work, not in school, not in training or their situation is unknown.

The figures, which were presented to a county council scrutiny committee involved 1,587 of the county’s youngsters – 9.6 per cent – and were described as ‘staggering’ and ‘a real worry’ by one councillor.

Liberal Democrat leader Dr James Walsh said:

“Given that we already have an under-skilled workforce in the county, I really want to know what measures are being taken to deal with that.”

Dr Walsh also asked about the number of of ‘economically active’ people aged 16-64 who were unemployed.

While the most recent data was not available, he questioned the council’s aim to see 80.45 per cent in a job, asking why West Sussex was happy to see almost 20 per cent of the workforce out of work.

It was a situation he said was ‘clearly likely to get a lot worse’ because of the impact of the pandemic and Dr Walsh asked what measures were being taken to help employers focus on economic recovery.

Bob Lanzer, cabinet member for economy, told the meeting that the 80.45 per cent target figure could be looked at again.

But he told Dr Walsh there were limits to what the council could do to get people back into work.

He said:

“Our role is principally one of influencer and influencing government to help fund new initiatives such as the innovation centre that the University of Chichester is promoting.”

He pointed out that part of the West Sussex Reset Plan — work being done to aid post-Covid economic recovery — was to ‘influence educational providers and the like to boost training in digital skills to improve employability’.

Mr Lanzer added that the council was lobbying the government to help the aviation sector, which has been hit hard by the pandemic and saw Virgin Atlantic announce it was pulling out of Gatwick Airport.

He predicted that helping the airport would have a knock-on effect, bringing relief to other areas such as hospitality.

As for the 16–17-year-olds, the meeting was told that this year’s figures could not be compared to those of 2018/19 and 2019/20 — 2.7 per cent and 2.4 per cent respectively — as those years did not include the youngsters whose situation was unknown.

A spokesman said that adding the unknowns placed the figure at 1,860 youngsters — 11.3 per cent — in July 2019, which is higher than this year’s.

The spokesman added:

“Our Post-16 service works to identify and engage with those not in education and training, and to put them in touch with our careers advisers who can help discuss options, which might include apprenticeships, further education, training or employment.”

Katherine Eberhart, director of finance & support services, told the meeting that the service was ‘working very hard’ to track down the ‘unknown’ teenagers.