Today our council made me so incredibly proud. At 8 o’ clock this morning they launched the findings of their task-force into youth employment. It was led by brilliant local employers which is a powerful sign that the council is willing to be led or work in partnership when it will deliver for residents.
And get this – the announcement today was to create a minimum of 1.000 apprenticeships in 1,000 days! In addition there’s a raft of other measures like setting up a local organisation to ensure they are of the right quality and delivered to the best standards and make it really easy for small and micro-businesses to have an apprentice.
18 months ago Warren Morgan, leader of our council, and I sat in a cafe near Brighton Station with a group of experts we’d gathered. We discussed one thing, ‘how do we end youth unemployment on our city’. After that session Warren said to me ‘I’m desperate for us to win because now we know how to do it I just want to make it happen’. Well we won and we’ve been working very closely together – me as MP with Warren, Cllr Tom Berwick and his great team of council officers, and more important than any of us the team of local businesspeople led by Zac Toumazi who is CEO of Sussex County Cricket.
I know that announcing it doesn’t mean it will automatically happen. Now the hard work really starts. But I hope you can celebrate with me and the team and most importantly of all the young people who will benefit. Our city should be thinking big when it comes to the potential of our young people and I think today is a brilliant step in the right direction. All the best, Peter