Worklessness

The region also contains 49 of the 100 most deprived wards in the country with a quarter of children living in poverty, compared to one fifth nationally. The five local authority areas that have the highest rate of people claiming out of work benefits are Liverpool, Knowsley, Blackpool, Manchester and Halton respectively – and in some of these areas more than one fifth of the working age population are claiming this benefit.

A lot of work is underway in the North West to tackle this issue and we have proposed to establish a Worklessness North West programme involving key public sector and mainly Government funded agencies together covering health, skills, housing, crime and academia as well as the NWDA and representatives from local government. This will focus on a number of very deprived areas with large workless populations.

The current difficult economic conditions make this an ideal time for this debate. The Minister believes we have to look forward and with the right education, training and encouragement there are no limits as to what people can achieve.

The Chancellor announced a package of further support for people and communities suffering the effects of unemployment. A key element of this is a new £1billion Future Jobs Fund. Local authorities and other organisations will be invited to bid for funds to create jobs for the longer term unemployed.

This initiative will help to generate jobs for those most in need: young people, disadvantaged groups and others  in deprived communities; and will deliver an important element of the guaranteed offer of work or training for all young people.

Recent figures showed there were almost 33,000 vacancies in the region’s Jobcentres and Jobcentre Plus has put in place a five-point pledge for all jobseekers – including cash for retraining, learning new skills, and even mortgage repayments.

JobCentre Plus is also managing a ‘Rapid Response Service’ (RRS) that aims to help people affected by redundancy to make a successful transition back into employment. National funding for this programme has been doubled by the government recently and from April it will guarantee extra support for people who have been out of work for more than six months.

The Regional Minister is also keen to ensure that redundancies caused by the current economic downturn do not impact detrimentally on the efforts to support the long term unemployed. She recently met with public sector and local government representatives to discuss this issue.