A GROUP of young people have been given the opportunity to work at a Bolton beauty training centre, thanks to the job centre’s Kickstart scheme.

Staff from Lillian Maund, a beauty salon and training centre based on New Hall Lane, attended the Kickstart Employer Marketplace event run by Bolton job centre as part of the most recent Bolton Fair.

There they met with young people interested in new opportunities and interviewed for placements as trainee beauty therapists.

A spokesperson for the salon said: “It was really good and helpful, I felt like I got support too as the staff helped me with everything.

“There were a lot of good candidates, four of which I offered placements to.”

The Kickstart programme, launched in September 2020, allows employers to offer young people aged 16 to 24 who are on Universal Credit a six-month work placement that is fully funded by the government.

The scheme expanded at the start of this year so that smaller businesses can also take advantage of this.

Previously a businesses would have to offer at least 30 of these roles to take part, but this has now been dropped.

Employers can now apply through more than 600 Kickstart gateway organisations including local authorities, charities and trade bodies who previously supported applications with less than 30 placements.

With Bolton among the worst-hit boroughs by the Covid crisis, the Department of Work and Pensions, which devised the scheme, hopes that it will help mitigate the pandemic’s effects on young people’s employment prospects after the most recent figures showed that 32,683 people in the borough were claiming Universal Credit.

Partnership manager at Bolton Jobcentre Plus Penelope Applegate has said previously that this is part of a range of measure taken to support young people.

She said: “There’s a whole range of extra support given to people depending on who they are and where they are.”