ENTREPRENEUR Brian Bennett says more must be done to help young people after 150 desperate youngsters applied for a single job.

Mr Bennett was shocked by the number of applicants and say more must be done to give them the skills needed to step on to the employment ladder.

The boss at Vantage Point Business Village spoke out after it emerged that there are nearly nine people chasing every post at the local job centre.

At 8.6 applicants per job, the Forest has the highest number of people after every vacancy in the whole of Gloucestershire.

And the situation looks set to get worse as local councils and the NHS prepare to lay off thousands of staff.

Mr Bennett advertised the GIS computer job and said: "The fact that 150 applied shows there are a huge number of young people out there desperate for a job.

"I am very concerned that there are so many talented young people who cannot get a job.

"One of the problems is not having skills aligned to the market place. There seems to be a lack of an awareness from colleges and schools about the realities of the job market and they are pushing more and more young people towards qualifications for jobs that do not exist."

Award-winning engineering company SPP Pumps say they have noticed a real difference in the growing number of young people chasing every apprenticeship place.

But operations director Terry Newby says the new retirement laws, which allow people to work beyond the usual pension age, mean it will be tougher than ever because firms will stop recruiting until they see how it works out.

He said: "We normally match retirees to apprentices but we don't know what is going to happen this year so we cannot take anybody on.

"In the past schools did not push their children towards engineering because they thought manufacturing was dying out, but that's far from the truth.

"We are going through a resurgence and a lot of the work is now coming back to the UK. Over the last few years we have had about 30 very good applicants for two apprenticeship places.

"But if I needed quality, time served machinists tomorrow, there would not be many of them around in the Forest."

Gloucestershire College Principal Greg Smith said: "It is true that not every individual who leaves school at 16 is work ready, and that many definitely benefit from undertaking a vocational course at college.

"We have noticed that the number of apprenticeship opportunities look low in the Forest of Dean and we intend to work closely with businesses to remedy this."