AQW 13067/17-22

Mr Andrew Muir
Alliance Party
North Down

Tabled Date: 20/01/2021
Answered On Date: 02/02/2021
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister for Communities to detail the total funding (i) bid for; (ii) received; (iii) spent; and (iv) surrendered to the centre in 2020/21 financial year with regards to the JobStart Initiative.

Answer:

The Department has reallocated internal funding in 2020-21 to meet the costs of the launching the JobStart scheme and continues to hold the funding required to launch the Scheme in 2020-21. To date no funding has been spent on the scheme or surrendered to DoF.

The Department bid to DoF as part of the Budget 2021-22 exercise for £24.7m to support delivery of the new and expanded labour market interventions in 2021-22, this included a £17.8m bid for JobStart.

The Executive’s Draft Budget 2021-22 was announced by the Finance Minister on 18 January 2021. The Draft Budget provides the proposed Resource and Capital investment funding allocations to departments for the 2021-22 financial year. The settlement provides the Department with no Covid-19 allocation to address the need for labour market interventions to support people into employment in 2021-22.