Two million need adding to current workforce in UK

THE UK faces a generational challenge: bringing an additional two million people into the workforce to solve the growing crisis of worklessness and economic inactivity. This is not merely an economic objective or arbitrary Government target, it's a national moral mission. And there is nowhere better placed to lead the charge than the North East.

- Kiran Fothergill

We have long been a region defined by resilience. From the shipyards and coal mines of yesteryear to today’s growing tech and green energy sectors, the North East has been on the front line of the UK’s industrial decline and reinvention.

Today, we have the opportunity to lead the charge of another kind of transformation: helping those trapped in worklessness into meaningful, lasting, employment.

I'm proud to be chairing the Jobs Foundation Business Council in the North East, which I hope will go some way to shining the spotlight on the great work of our educators and businesses and highlight what the minds behind our region's success stories need to get the North East, and Britain, working again.

The Jobs Foundation have already set to work in this area: building a coalition of over 1,000 business leaders to support their work and producing a detailed case study on the Hartlepool and Redcar business community as part of their foundational research, Two Million Jobs.

It is now producing a best practice report, profiling the best examples of how businesses are already supporting disadvantaged groups into the workplace, to be published later this year.