Action for Community Employment (Hansard, 22 January 1997)

§ Mr. Ancram

Responsibility for the subject in question has been delegated to the Training and Employment Agency under its chief executive, Mr. Ian Walters. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

659W

Letter from Mr. Ian Walters to Mr. Tony Worthington, dated 22 January 1997: The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has asked me, as Chief Executive of the Training and Employment Agency, to reply to your question about the Action for Community Employment (ACE) scheme. The ACE scheme was introduced in 1981, as the Northern Ireland counterpart to the Community Programme in Great Britain, to provide temporary employment, with training, of up to one year's duration for long term unemployed adults in projects of community benefit. Its essential purpose is to enable participants gain practical work experience which in turn will help them to compete more effectively for available permanent jobs. There are currently 229 ACE projects of which the majority are sponsored by voluntary organisations, local community groups, charitable bodies and churches. The range of activities undertaken by the projects include care of the elderly and disabled, environmental and conservation work, research and administration. ACE peaked in the early 1990s with over 10,000 places available across Northern Ireland. As you know, the resources allocated to ACE were reduced in each of the last two Public Expenditure Surveys. In the 1995/96 financial year £49.96 million was spent providing an average occupancy of 9,189 ACE places. This year £39.8 million has been allocated to provide an average occupancy of 7,200 places. In 1997/98 and the following two years ACE has been allocated £28.5 million which will support around 5,200 places. One of the indicators which the Agency uses to measure the performance of ACE is the percentage of leavers who proceed into employment, further education or training. In recent years approximately 40% of participants achieved a positive outcome on leaving the scheme. You may also wish to know that at the end of September 1996, the latest date for which data is available, 53% of ACE workers were female and 35% of ACE posts were part-time. I hope you find this information useful.