To ask the Minister for Employment and Learning to detail how the Enabling Success Strategy will target economic inactivity in rural areas.

The strategy fully recognises the geographical variances of economic inactivity in Northern Ireland, particularly in terms of the different issues and barriers experienced in urban and rural areas.

In response to this, the strategy will seek to test a range of different interventions in both urban and rural areas, through a competitive pilot testing process, as outlined in the implementation plan’s Project B.

This will allow a number of innovative, small-scale initiatives to be tested for their potential to improve outcomes for the target groups. The process will allow for the incremental development, testing and evaluation of initiatives to identify models of best practice through robust performance data.

Examples of approaches that may warrant further exploration through the pilot testing model may include:

innovative ways to sustainably engage with people from the target groups at an early stage and on a voluntary basis;

engaging and supporting people from the target groups to improve their pre-employment and job skills in non-traditional settings;

providing bespoke, holistic mentoring support to people from the target groups to motivate and support them towards and into employment;

addressing issues of transport deprivation, isolation and accessibility, and;

lifting job-search horizons and improving labour mobility in rural settings, amongst others.

This process will also help to identify the key success factors for different circumstances by providing evidence on how to approach different forms of disengagement, such as the urban and rural aspects of inactivity.

Based upon the outcomes of this approach, a geographical action plan may be developed.