125 Business Leaders Come Together to Call for Skills Tax Relief

The Jobs Foundation joined forces with the Christopher Nieper Foundation and over 125 of Britain’s leading business leaders to tackle the growing crisis of nearly a million young people not in employment, education or training.

In an open letter to the Chancellor, over a hundred of our Business Council members joined our call for the introduction of Skills Tax Relief in the upcoming Autumn Budget – a measure to help empower businesses to create more opportunities for young people to get into work.

We were delighted that our letter received coverage across the media, including write-ups in The Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, and City AM, as well as an op-ed in the Mail from our partner in drafting the letter, Christopher Nieper OBE.

In his piece, Nieper states that: “The cost of the NEETs crisis to the economy is unsustainable… Business wants to help tackle this.”

We were also proud to head to  Downing Street to deliver our joint letter in-person, helping reiterate the urgency of this mission.

The statistics are sobering. Nearly a million young people in the UK are currently NEET – not in education, employment, or training. That’s 13.2% of young people, and a generation at risk of being left behind.

In response to this, we’ve proposed a simple solution: Skills Tax Relief, enabling businesses like yours to recoup costs associated with apprenticeships, vocational training, and work-based learning.

We’re proud to have made the voice of business heard at the highest levels of government. Last week, both the Chancellor and the Prime Minister acknowledged the crisis, with the PM calling the nearly million NEETs “a huge challenge for our country.”

We’ll continue pushing for action, and we’re grateful to have the support of so many of our Business Council members in this vital mission. If you’d like to read the full letter or share it with your network, you can find it here.