The UK should identify and track young people at risk of economic inactivity to prevent them slipping out of the workforce, Alan Milburn's review into youth employment will recommend.

The former Labour health secretary will say that the government must set up locally-led youth services in every community in England, when he delivers his recommendations this month, in a bid to stop teenagers from falling through the cracks.

Just under a million 16- to-24-year olds in the UK (13 per cent) are now classified as 'Neet', meaning they are not in education, employment or training, up from a low of 673,000 in 2021.

Earlier this year, Mr Milburn labelled the surge a "whole system failure". His interim report revealed that 45 per cent of today's 24-year-old Neets have never had a job, despite 84 per cent saying that they actively want to learn or work.

The state must build a permanent community support network for them, the review will say, pointing to cuts that have hollowed out local services over the past decade.