Campaign seeking young people for council roles

A recruitment campaign is seeking to attract young people to local authority roles, including those delivering the place services such as local highways, waste and recycling, green space and access, as well as people based roles.

The Find Your Path campaign has been developed in partnership with the DfT, the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning & Transport (ADEPT), along with Colas, the Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) and the Midlands Highway Alliance Plus (MHA+). 

The campaign, aimed at people between 18 and 27, has been designed together with councils to showcase variety of jobs available. 

Research by ADEPT's Future Highways Research Group (FHRG) revealed that only 11% of local authority staff are aged 30 or younger, highlighting a lack of diversity, high vacancy rates across critical service areas and urgent skills gaps in environmental and technological fields. 

As part of the campaign development process, detailed focus groups were conducted with young people to understand their career aspirations and perceptions of local government. The discussions revealed that most young people do not understand what local authorities do, are not attracted to local authority careers and are unaware of the range of jobs available. 

The eight week pilot campaign will run in five local authority areas: Barnsley, Hounslow, Oxfordshire, Plymouth and South Gloucestershire. It will focus on innovative recruitment strategies with the aim of showing the opportunities and meaningful roles available within local government.