Another £500,000 to get jobless working

MORE than £500,000 is set to be ploughed into Oldham to get the long-term jobless back into work, the Government was expected to announce today.

Communities Secretary John Denham is allocating another £40 million to 61 councils across the country with pockets of high-level deprivation as part of the Working Neighbourhood fund

Oldham will be given an additional £500,544 on top of its £17.6 million allocation to help the poorest get the support and skills needed to break the cycle of long-term benefits and unemployment.

Mr Denham said: “We’re determined to do more to help these families. They need to know they have not fallen through the net, or been written off.

“Their circumstances are often complex and they feel cut off from the job market. In past recessions we saw too much talent and potential get left behind — we are determined to make sure that this will never happen again.”

Ministers believe one of the most effective ways of reaching out to the long-term unemployed is through social landlords, who already have relationships with their tenants. Mr Denham said they can become the doorway for council-led agency interventions.

Housing Minister John Healey said: “There is scope for social landlords to do more to support tenants. We know that councils and housing associations tend to be trusted by their tenants and that many already provide advice services and want to do more.

“As part of their service to tenants I want to see more landlords offering the better-off-in-work calculations, which tell people how much better off they would be in a job and give them more confidence in making the leap from welfare to work.”

The Working Neighbourhood Fund is being given to the 61 local authorities with the highest levels of deprivation and low levels of skills and enterprise. Since 2008 £1.5 billion of funding has been distributed or allocated for councils to decide how to use best to tackle unemployment.

Figures released this week showed the number of people claiming out of work benefits in Oldham had fallen by almost 500 in the last month. A total of 820 people across the borough have been claiming benefits for more than a year.