According to a Downing Street press release published on 2 August 2026, National Grid will put £5 million into a new Power Within Employability Fund aimed at 5,000 young people who are not in education, employment or training over five years. The announcement says the scheme will start in the first half of 2027, support up to 1,000 participants a year across the UK, and operate as one of the first major employer responses to the Prime Minister’s recent education changes. (gov.uk)
The timing links the fund directly to the Prime Minister’s 27 July 2026 package on technical education. In that statement, Downing Street said young people from age 14 would be able to combine core academic subjects with technical learning tied to local labour market need, with rollout ambitions from September 2028. The Department for Education’s implementation plan then set out the post-16 architecture in England: V Levels at level 3 alongside A levels and T Levels, plus new Foundation Certificates and Occupational Certificates at level 2. (gov.uk)
A further point is territorial coverage. National Grid’s fund is described as UK-wide in the government release, while the Department for Education’s published implementation plan explicitly applies to England. That does not prevent alignment, but it does mean delivery partners will need to work across different skills systems, funding arrangements and local institutional structures in the devolved nations. (gov.uk)
The policy pressure behind the announcement is clear. The Office for National Statistics estimated that 1,012,000 people aged 16 to 24 were not in education, employment or training in January to March 2026, equal to 13.5% of that age group. Alan Milburn’s interim review for government, published in May 2026, described the country as approaching one million young people in this position and argued that weak transitions from school, college and training into work remain a central problem. (ons.gov.uk)
The published offer is practical rather than abstract. According to the Downing Street release, the fund will pay for support with transport barriers, including help towards a driving licence where that limits access to work, as well as industry-recognised credentials such as Construction Skills Certification Scheme cards, one-to-one coaching, CV and interview preparation, and direct links to vacancies across National Grid, its suppliers and the wider energy and infrastructure sector. Delivery is expected to run through specialist employment and skills partners with provision matched to local need. (gov.uk)
The sector choice also matches existing government labour market messaging. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said in June 2026 that more than £100 billion of private clean energy investment had been announced since July 2024, while the government’s clean energy jobs plan projected more than 400,000 extra jobs by 2030. On that basis, National Grid’s scheme is best read as an upstream workforce measure: not a substitute for formal training reform, but a route to get more young people close enough to employer demand to take up entry-level roles, further training or apprenticeships. (gov.uk)
Skills England’s 2026 annual report helps explain why this sort of programme has policy traction. It identified repeated gaps around real work experience, the translation of transferable skills into recruitment language, and the lack of clearer pathways between education and employment. National Grid’s model speaks directly to those issues because it combines short-term employability support with sector-specific credentials and employer links, rather than treating confidence-building and labour market access as separate problems. (gov.uk)
What remains unresolved is delivery detail. The published announcement gives a headline budget, a five-year participation target and the broad support offer, but it does not name delivery partners, set out regional allocations or publish outcome measures beyond the 5,000-place figure. Those operational choices will determine whether the fund becomes a targeted route into shortage occupations or a looser employability scheme with uneven local reach. (gov.uk)