The North East is England’s proudest region. There are good grounds for this. History is written across it: from Hadrian’s Wall to Bamburgh Castle.
But the North East is now where the failures of our education, labour and welfare systems converge: the meeting point of challenges both new and longstanding.
It has the highest rate of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) in the UK, with almost a fifth of North Eastern 16- to 24-year-olds neither in work nor education. More worryingly, this is old news in the North East. Its rate of NEETs now is almost identical to its rate in 2006 and, even when rates fell across Britain in the 2010s, the North East’s remained the worst.
in June, we hosted a Big Listen with Fenwick at their flagship store Newcastle, inviting over 120 frontline organisations, charities, and employers to ask what we might do together to tackle this crisis.
We are calling on ministers and local leaders to ‘go Dutch’ and:
● Boost regional growth by making it pay to hire young people. The mayor should turn Riverside Sunderland into a Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC) and establish clear criteria for other Development Zones to follow. Ineffective employment subsidies should be replaced by a Future Workforce Credit (FWC) covering 30 per cent of the wages of a 16- to 24-year-old who has been NEET for at least three months.
● Stop young people falling out of education. Government should strengthen mainstream schools’ ability to meet additional needs before they escalate into absence or exclusion, through targeted Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) support and increased support during early years. The North East should become the first region to pilot an improved V Level, combining practical learning with real, paid experience of work.
● Find disconnected young people and build a route back. The expanded mayoral NEET programme should be piloted in the North East and delivered through colleges, charities and trusted community organisations rather than relying principally on Jobcentres. Local authorities should track young people’s destinations up to the age of 24 so that nobody simply disappears from the system.
● Put local organisations in charge of local delivery. Youth and NEET funding should be incorporated into the North East’s Integrated Settlement, accompanied by a binding target to reduce the region’s NEET rate. The stability of that settlement should reach the frontline through multi-year commissioning, while the DWP should remove unnecessary rules preventing trusted community organisations from operating Youth Hubs in premises young people will actually use.
● Turn health support into a route towards independence. PIP and Universal Credit Health should be reformed so that the welfare system does not consign young people with milder mental health conditions to long-term inactivity. The savings should be reinvested in accessible treatment, trusted mentors and intensive employment support, with the North East given the power to direct provision around local need.
The North East has suffered from the country’s highest NEET rates for almost two decades. It should now become the place where Britain proves that the crisis can be reversed. Timidity is the one thing the region can no longer afford.
