AN education and support campaign launched yesterday will equip local people with the skills and confidence to fill thousands of new jobs planned for the borough by 2021.
Thurrock Council is joining forces with Jobcentreplus and two Work Programme providers to tackle unemployment in the borough in a coordinated way. It will particularly focus on people who find it most difficult to get work.
The partners’ progress and effectiveness will be measured by hard facts such as cutting the number of local people receiving Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) from 3085 in May to 2600 by next March. To ensure that young people in particular benefit from the scheme, the agreement signed this week aims to reduce the number of 18-24 year olds receiving JSA from 760 to fewer than 600 during the same period.
The plan’s practical steps for achieving those targets include:
Helping people with affordable childcare
Work with people who find it particularly difficult to get a job – such as the long term unemployed, people with disabilities and carers
Provide local people looking for work with the computer skills to search for jobs online
Supporting employers so they can recruit local candidates with the right skills.
Thurrock Council leader Cllr John Kent said local businesses and the major new employers arriving in the borough have been involved in drawing up the agreement.
“Some business people have told us they are struggling to recruit locally because many of our residents don’t have the skills they are looking for or a solid history of work. Our children would not forgive us if the thousands of jobs created at massive new projects such as London Gateway and Thames Enterprise Park go to people outside the borough when many Thurrock residents yearn to learn and work.”
The growth strategy agreed by Thurrock Council and its partners focusses on six ‘growth hubs’. It aims to deliver major projects such as the DP World developments and a major film studio at Purfleet while also supporting existing businesses of all sizes.
Cllr Kent suggested that a skilled, enthusiastic workforce is crucial to attracting future investment.
“This sort of agreement is not only good news for local people and for businesses already established in Thurrock. It is a virtuous circle because employers are increasingly choosing to base their operations in areas where local people have high skill levels.”
He pointed to the role Thurrock Council played in working with Thames Enterprise Park to identify the skills it will need in coming years. The council then helped South Essex College reach an agreement with the University of Northampton to provide further and higher education courses that will help local students gain those skills.
In the agreement with Jobcentreplus, the council has pledged to continue to emphasise the need to recruit local labour and provide apprenticeships or other training in its own contracts. Cllr Kent pointed to the council’s five year, £68m Transforming Homes project as an example of how this approach is already working in Thurrock. It created more than 30 opportunities for individuals to begin a career in construction or return to work in its first year.
I am glad about this article. positive steps by the local college, training organisations, council and jobcentre plus are very much welcomed lets hope it helps the long term unemployed and disabled gain the skills needed in the modern workplace.
No benefit for your third child if you’re on the dole: Tories unveil controversial welfare plan
• Child benefits for unemployed ‘should be capped at two children’
• Under-25s could also lose housing benefit to live, says Grant Shapps
• Tory chairman wants working and jobless families treated the same
• George Osborne could cut £26,000 benefit cap after the 2015 election
• Prime Minister’s Twitter gaffe links to spoof account of Cabinet minister
• BBC accused of bias in benefits row with Iain Duncan Smith
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Capped off: Jobless families should only receive benefits for two children,Tory chairman Grant Shapps said
Child-related benefits for the jobless should be capped at two children, the Tory party chairman declared last night.
The move would put them in the same position as working parents who cannot afford to have large families, Grant Shapps argued.
Unemployed parents who then choose to have more than two children ‘will know that welfare is not going to fund that choice’.
As the Government’s £26,000-a-year benefits cap for the out-of-work took effect yesterday, Mr Shapps insisted further radical reforms to welfare were back on the table.
In another proposal, the minister said under-25s who are unemployed should be denied housing benefit, so they have to live with their parents rather than be funded by the taxpayer to move to a place of their own.
Someone else will pay. The battle cry of the left. Hello. This is the new reality. Spending other peoples money is the easy bit. Labour need to have a bit of a think. Joe public has had enough. We need new ideas not the same old same old.
And burdening parents with children under 25 is a good thing, spending other people’s money, what like the present government is doing,
remember the government doesn’t like thieves they can’t stand the competition
Spending other peoples money? then don’t and give back your hard earned cash back to your clients or bosses.
When do your children become a burden? Young people who cannot afford their own place stay at home with mum and dad. It works the world over. Claiming the government are thieves seems a bit rich. Labours whole philosophy is based on taking money from the successful in society to bail out everyone else. A great idea as long as society has enough successful people paying in and you don’t start spending what you haven’t got.
sack the Armed Services and get rid of trident. reason novoice does not want the government spending other peoples money.
Unless its for Bankers
The government spend money routinely what they haven’t got.
And how can you mention MPs without mentioning thieves
just remember the expenses scandal
And the latest Westminster is full of perverts and kiddie fiddler’s just the kind of people you need to run the country
I think people should read parts of the MAC report to understand why we have so many young unemployed. It’s easier and more cost effective to employ immigrants. Also due to a previously and currently failed education system and overly generous welfare system.
People are screaming here at the Tories. Ed Miliband came out last week and said that the Labour party would ban anyone under the age of 25 from claiming benefits that weren’t training or in education. So was that just a soundbite to appease the niggled middle classes that are starting to see their own families welfare as more important than everyone else’s amidst the realisation that they will be the one’s to pay for Labour’s utopia in the future.
A generation screwed and betrayed by the Labour party now find themselves the targets of all main political parties because they realise their failed policies are breeding a generation of long term unemployed. This used to be the disease of the northern industrial areas. Now it’s spread to the whole country. Suddenly politicians see it as a problem. They are the most blinded of the blind.