Employment plan

More details emerged yesterday on the Government's new flagship employment programme for young adults. The scheme, announced in the budget, puts up a £1.2 billion pot for councils, voluntary organisations and other bodies to create jobs and training opportunities for 18-24 year olds who have been unemployed for 12 months.

The Future Jobs Trust, as it is called, forms a key part of the Government's new pledge to guarantee every 18-24 year old a paid job or training place from January 2010. In the budget the chancellor said the 150,000 jobs would be "socially useful", without clearly defining what that would mean. Today ministers suggested that sports coaching, crime prevention, tourism and working with children could be good examples of the kind of jobs to be created. All good wholesome stuff.

But the danger is that the programmes created, which must last at least six months, will fail to provide young adults with skills that actually prove to be useful in the real labour market. Haing worked for six months as a sport instructor, will there then be jobs in the labour market in that field?

This was the problem with the eighties community work programmes. People were put to work doing useful tasks in their communities, such as cutting grass verges, only to find at the end of it they were infact a step further away from the labour market. This mistake cannot be repeated again.

The programme must focus on skills that will be needed in the economy of the future ­ on skills where there is a forecast shortage. The obvious area is construction. More than half those working in the construction industry are over the age of 55, meaning there will be a massive shortage of skilled workers in the near future. When that is combined with the need to meet carbon goals the answer, surely is to focus this new scheme on green building on greening and modernising the public estate.

Get out of work construction workers over the age of 50 running the scheme, and teaching young unemployed the skills the industry needs, such as fitting solar panels, and improving energy efficiency. That is a sustainable jobs programme. But there was little mention of the green economy, so hyped in last week's budget, by ministers yesterday. Let's hope the start talking about it ­ and acting on it soon. Because the last thing young unemployed adults need is to be put into dead-end programmes.

Blog exclusive: Leeds confirmed as statutory city region

We've just got a great exclusive here on the Regeneration & Renewal blog: I understand that Leeds has been confirmed as one of the statutory city-regions in tomorrow's budget.

Our story earlier expanded on a tip by the Manchester Evening News' political editor David Ottewell that the Yorkshire giant was likely to appear in the Budget. I have had an update in the past few minutes and understand that the rumours are true – Leeds will be one of the statutory city regions in tomorrow's announcement by the Chancellor.

Manchester is almost certain to join it. Having Leeds and Manchester leading the city-region charge may give the movement a bit of a fillip, and will make other big conurbations think seriously about joining the party.

Here's our map of all the cities applying to Government for statutory city-region status. If successful they will gain new controls over portfolios such as housing, regeneration and transport.

Remember to log into the Regen.net tomorrow lunchtime for my live blog on Budget 2009. I'll be getting regular comments from a team of experts and posting them up as they come in.