The website launched by the government and backed by Lord Alan Sugar has filled a reporter 1,185 vacancies out of 18,000 available. Critics are calling it a failure, with the conservative branding it an “expensive gimmick”.

Lord Sugar launched the National Apprenticeship Matching Service earlier this year, with TV ads and the support of the government which made Sugar a peer and government enterprise tsar.

The scheme cost a reported £2.85m in advertising in 2008-2009, with additional efforts planned to fund an extra 35,000 apprenticeships to help tackle the recession.

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