Workstart (Hansard, 25 March 1994)

§ Mr. David Hunt

We have decided to extend the workstart pilots for a further six months.

There are four pilots, two run by the Employment Service in south London and east Kent, and two by training and enterprise councils in Tyneside and in Devon and Cornwall. Each offers a financial incentive to employers who recruit eligible unemployed people. All of those helped by the scheme have been unemployed for a very long time—over two years in the east Kent and Tyneside pilots, and over four years in south London and in Devon and Cornwall.

The pilots began last summer, each with funding to place up to 250 people into employment by the end of March 1994. The rate of take up was initially slow, but it has improved significantly as the pilots have worked to match individual long-term unemployed people to specific vacancies put forward by employers.

To date, more than 400 people have been placed in jobs supported by the scheme—more than half of them in the last two months. I believe this is a significant achievement. A great many people who have found jobs through workstart might otherwise have remained unemployed for a further long period of time.

Each pilot will continue until the end of September to work towards the one thousand opportunities originally planned. There are, however, evident difficulties despite all the efforts of the TEC in matching very long-term unemployed people to vacancies in a rural area as large as Devon and Cornwall, and we are therefore making some changes to this pilot. I have asked the Employment Service to operate the scheme in Devon and Cornwall for the next six months, with eligibility extended to those who have been unemployed for two years or more, to see whether its wider network of local offices and the enlargement of the eligible group can improve performance.

There are still lessons to be learnt from the extended operation of the pilots, and evaluation will continue.

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