The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA) approved a business case on Monday to find ways to improve young people’s access to employment, training or education. If successful, it would unlock more than £4.9m in government funding to be spent on a pilot scheme that would be used to see how other projects could work across the county.

The aim is for Cambridgeshire to become one of eight regions in England designated as “youth guarantee trailblazer areas”, where they test different ways of tackling unemployment. The other areas are the East Midlands, Liverpool, London, Tees Valley, the West Midlands and West of England, with each region thinking up their own approach.

A report presented to the CPCA funding committee said the youth forum would be “critical” to making the scheme a success and should include “young people’s voices and lived experiences”.

The new forum would be recruited with the help of local organisations such as youth groups, councils, job centres and volunteer groups