Job Clubs (Hansard, 27 January 1989)

§ Mr. Fowler

I have reviewed the job club network in the light of the fall in unemployment in the last 12 months of 530,000. The job club programme will continue to have a key role in helping longer-term unemployed people to obtain jobs. It will complement and be co-ordinated with the employment training programme, and people who have not found a job on completing employment training will be able to make full use of a job club to do so. Action to ensure that people with special needs, including people with disabilities and people in inner cities, are effectively helped through job clubs will be continued and reinforced.

I have therefore set the employment service a target of 175,000 participants in job clubs in 1989–90. To improve the services that they can offer it is intended to build on best practice and develop the expertise of those running job clubs by concentrating resources in the areas of most need.

An ambitious expansion for job clubs was set in 1987 when the level of unemployment was much higher. The unemployment picture today is far different and some job clubs are underutilised. The job club network is best served, therefore, by rationalising particularly those where alternative job club facilities are available in the same locality. This means that we will be able to streamline the network from around 1,200 in the country to 1,000 nationwide.

To ensure that long-term unemployed people fully appreciate the benefits that job clubs can offer in helping find jobs and the success that participants achieve, a national publicity drive will commence on 30 January.