Millions of jobseekers will be able to access longer work-related training while in receipt of benefits to boost their chances of finding employment.
Later this month, DWP Train and Progress (TaP), a new DWP initiative aimed at increasing access to training opportunities for claimants, will see an extension to the length of time people can receive Universal Credit while undertaking work-focused study.
Initially available for 6 months, the amount of time Universal Credit claimants can take part in full-time training will extend to up to 12 weeks throughout Great Britain – up from the current 8 weeks.
The change will ensure those receiving UC and in the intensive work search group can take advantage of sector-specific training from digital skills to social care and engineering while receiving the financial support they need.
It includes access to the level 3 adult offer, with the Department for Work and Pensions today announcing it will go even further and increase this to 16 weeks for those enrolled on level 3 Skills Bootcamps.
In agreement with their Work Coach, claimants can have up to 12 weeks of free full time training.
It is not entirely clear what these courses are, and exactly what this entails. The only media reports simply reproduce the DWP Press Release.
Will Legacy Claimants be eligible?
This name is alone is not welcoming. It sounds like something delinquent Americans got sent to in the 1950s.
Skills bootcamps
As part of the Lifetime Skills Guarantee, the Prime Minister also announced the skills bootcamp programme.
Skills bootcamps offer free, flexible courses of just 12 to 16 weeks for adults aged 19 or over and who are either in work or recently unemployed (some skills bootcamps have additional eligibility criteria). They give people the opportunity to build up sector-specific skills and fast-track to an interview with a local employer.
It is not clear that many new qualifications will help, given that employers and workers already say that a large number of differently named certificates confuses peeople;
The move comes as the UK government launches almost 400 additional free qualifications as part of the UK government’s Lifetime Skills Guarantee, and follows the announcement earlier this week of a further 13,500 Work Coaches in Jobcentres across the country.
People will also wonder if this statement relates to claimants:
Check the eligibility criteria. It used to be the case that 25+ would have to pay to get a level 3 (A level-type or BTEC Nationals) qualification. No longer. If you only have GCSEs or O level qualifications, the courses are free.
— Therese Coffey #HandsFaceSpaceFRESHAIR (@theresecoffey) April 1, 2021
There does not appear to be a current version of ‘Community Work Placement’ and all the rest, or is there? Things like that are hardly going to happen during Lockdown.
The creative professional from Great Yarmouth, 20, left a job just before the pandemic began and has only worked for a month at her local theatre since.
According to new research from the Prince’s Trust, people under 25 account for three in five of the jobs lost during the crisis so far.
And it warns youth unemployment could rise even higher.
The problem, it says, is that younger workers are over-represented in sectors hit hardest by the pandemic, such as hospitality and entertainment, and these will take longer to recover.
They are also under-represented in occupations likely to see the strongest job growth coming out of the crisis, such as health and social work.
Meanwhile;
Food bank open today 11am till 2pm. If you are in need and receive Universal credit pop along to see our friendly and helpful team pic.twitter.com/jiKZyAcRam
— Littlecoates Community Centre (@CcLittlecoates) March 26, 2021
We asked our volunteers what £20 buys in their weekly shop. If Universal Credit is cut in September as planned, claimants will lose a lot from their weekly shops. If you'd like to be part of our mosaic, please send a pic of what £20 buys for you to development@gmlaw.org.uk. pic.twitter.com/MkjcIgu9pd
Everyone of working age has to pay a minimum contribution of 20% from 01 April 2015 (the contribution for the period 01 April 2013 to 31 March 2015 will remain at 8.5% as agreed in January 2013) of their Council Tax liability unless they are in a protected group. (War pensioners, war widow(er)s and people who receive Armed Forces compensation scheme payments will not have to pay the minimum contribution).
This 20% rule is pretty widespread now.
A hefty sum, around £287.8 a year (National average, band D, Band D property to £1,439).
In Ipswich, all people of working age have to pay at least 8.5% of their Council Tax bill, regardless of their income. From 1st April 2018, this will reduce to 5%.
But now we learn Leeds Labour Council is running this compulsory scheme.
If you are claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance and have been claiming Council Tax support for 26 weeks or more, you will be offered a place on the personal work support programme.
You will be required to complete five review appointments with one of our employment advisors who are able to support all aspects of looking for work which includes:
Help to update your CV
Advice and support for applying for vacancies online
Advice on how to find the type of work you are looking for
The latest job vacancy information
Free access to our computers
Help with any health, money, benefit or housing concerns that you may have
To book an appointment with an advisor, please call 0113 222 4404.
Neets who remain adrift of the system become increasingly unemployable.
The number of young people in Britain who spend long periods neither working nor studying has increased in the past year, according to a think-tank report. The total share of 16- to 24-year-olds who spent some time not in employment, education or training (Neets) declined last year, according to an analysis of Office for National Statistics data by the Learning and Work Institute think-tank, published on Wednesday. But the analysis showed that the percentage of young people who were Neet for a year or more rose from 9.8 per cent to 11.2 per cent in the first quarter of this year, compared with the first quarter of last year.
Educated myself through FE’s – both ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels (part-time) I found the report published on the 3rd of August in this journal, Further Education News, particularly relevant.
For a start the article underlines this, “Nearly 2 million young people between 16-24 spent some time NEET last year. “
Without being too rude about those providing the courses for young people I hope they are not of the order we older unemployed lot have had to undergo, thanks to SEETEC and the other chancers in the ‘Unemployed business” and do some serious stuff at FE colleges.
Progress in tackling youth unemployment has ground to a halt with more young people spending over 12 months out of education, employment or training (NEET) raising concerns over the government’s approach.
Reductions in the headline figure of NEETs are cited by the government as evidence of its success in tackling youth unemployment with the latest quarterly figures claiming NEET levels at 800,000 (11.2%) – a 68,000 reduction on the same quarter last year.
But the latest Youth Jobs Index from Impetus-PEF reveals that the number of young people who are NEET for over a year has increased sharply since they reported the figure last year.
Commenting on the findings of the second Youth Jobs Index, Andy Ratcliffe, CEO of Impetus-PEF – a charity that finds, funds and builds the most promising charities working with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to help them become stronger organisations, said:
“We’ve just come away from an election where the youth vote counted, but our findings show there are still crippling numbers of young people not in education, employment or training who aren’t being counted at all. The headline drop in the number of young people who are neither earning or learning next to the increase in the numbers who are enduring this for over a year, confirms that we have structural problem in Britain that has not gone away.”
Using data produced by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) for the Labour Force Survey, (LFS) the Youth Jobs Index provides a detailed picture of young people’s experiences of being NEET. Unlike the LFS though, it tracks the progress of young people over time rather than giving a quarterly “snapshot”. This means that the index is better placed to track the duration that young people stay NEET.
And,
Nearly 2 million young people between 16-24 spent some time NEET last year. One in 10 young people (811,000) spent a year or more not in education or work, an increase from the 714,000 who spent more than 12 months NEET in the previous year.
The negative consequences of being long-term NEET are well known, with those affected experiencing poor mental and physical health and a reduction of £225,000 to their future earning potential.
The risk of being NEET varies depending on qualifications. Young people who fail to secure a Level 2 qualification are twice as likely to be long-term NEET. In contrast, for higher level qualifications there is only a 10 per cent risk of being NEET for six months and a 3 per cent risk of spending 12 months NEET.
Boycott Workfare, the admirable campaign group against government schemes for unpaid work for the out-of-work, has resurfaced with a chapter in a book published by Pluto Press.
A new book chapter using testimonies compiled by Boycott Workfare exposes the violent impact of forced labour.
When we talk about what’s wrong with workfare, we often mention the horrifying material impact on people’s lives of the benefit sanctions that underwrite it. The political impact of unwaged work is also important – the way it attacks workplace rights and destroys our freedom. And workfare is psychologically violent and humiliating: it is coerced labour that’s supposed to build skills and motivation but obviously does nothing apart from offer free work to businesses and charities.
Now, in a freely available chapter of The Violence of Austerity, just published by Pluto Press, the accounts of 97 people who were on workfare schemes between 2011 and 2015 show how workfare is not only ruthlessly exploitative, but can also mean being forced into dangerous work in which health and safety laws are violated as a matter of routine. As the authors write:
If being employed in workfare schemes can be read as a forced and therefore violent process in itself, it should also be read as a process that contains the potential for a different type of violence: the violence that confronts workers when they are told to stand in the cold, to lift heavy loads that they physically cannot lift, or to endure other forms of physical and psychological degradation.
‘The violence of workfare’ documents 64 concrete allegations of breaches of health and safety legislation, at 43 workfare exploiters across the UK – in charities, social enterprises, maintenance companies and discount stores, as well as in environmental, agricultural and recycling projects. The first-hand accounts that the chapter is based on were all submitted to Boycott Workfare via the name and shame section of this website. These ‘employers’ benefited from 1,139 weeks of forced labour from the 97 people whose testimonies are included. That’s almost 22 years of coerced, unpaid labour.
These testimonies make clear how people have been forced to carry out hard labour or heavy lifting, despite existing medical conditions which make this work agony. The testimonies reveal how people have been denied access to protective equipment, and how people have been exposed to dust, chemicals and other hazards. In some cases, these accounts document how organisations have refused workfare conscripts access to food or water, and denied them even short breaks.
At the same time, the testimonies collected together in this chapter provide evidence of workfare exploiters threatening to ‘sack’ people who don’t work fast enough, or try to complain or try to gather evidence of the conditions they are being forced to operate in. People on workfare face being sanctioned if they are unwilling to work in unsafe conditions or if they take any kind of action to draw attention to these conditions.
And some workfare exploiters, it is made clear, are more than willing to exploit the fear that the sanctions regime generates to try and force people to accept dangerous working conditions. That same fear is used to ensure as much management control over workfare conscripts as possible. ‘The fear of sanction can intensify and generate yet more unreasonable demands from employers,’ the authors write. ‘Workfare, as a form of forced labour, effectively permits employers to breach health and safety laws with impunity’. Dangerous working conditions are an effect of unfree labour, compelled by the threat of sanctions.
But we can fight.
We are all entitled to the same basic health and safety protections in workplaces, and in the next few weeks, Boycott Workfare is aiming to bring out a ‘know your health and safety rights leaflet’ that can be used to provide information on these rights, and how to challenge dangerous conditions. And we must continue to name and shame exploiters, and expose the conditions in which they force people to work. Public pressure works, and now that workfare exploiters can no longer hide behind anonymity, we can consign workfare to history.
‘The violence of workfare’, by Jon Burnett and David Whyte, is available for free here. You can read more about the chapter, and the rest of the book, in this article from Disability News Service.
Boycott Workfare is a UK-wide campaign to end forced unpaid work for people who receive social security.
We are a grassroots campaign, formed in 2010 by people with experience of workfare and those concerned about its impact.
We expose the companies and organisations profiting from workfare and we take action against them. We encourage organisations to pledge to boycott workfare. We inform people of their rights at the jobcentre and we provide information to support claimants challenging workfare and sanctions.
Boycott Workfare is not a front for any political party, or affiliated with any political party. Anyone who shares our aims is welcome to get involved. Email us: info@boycottworkfare.org, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Unfortunately, Boycott Workfare do not currently have the capacity to take on casework. We recommend that claimants contact local organisations for one-to-one advice and support.
Council housing managers have urged the government to halt the rolling introduction of Universal Credit, which they said is causing “considerable hardship” to tenants.
The National Federation of ALMOs (NFA) and the Association of Retained Council Housing (ARCH) also called on ministers to scrap the seven-day waiting period for new claims.
They said that almost four years on from the initial introduction of Universal Credit “our research shows that delays in the assessment process, poor communications between DWP and landlords, and the seven-day wait period continue to cause significant problems to both landlords and their tenants”.
Rent arrears among Universal Credit claimants remained “stubbornly high” at 73% – equivalent to £6.68m – and 40% of households had accumulated arrears as a consequence of claiming.
Meanwhile, households faced mounting debts, as the average arrears for Universal Credit claimants had increased from £611.73 in March 2016 to £772.21 a year later.
NFA managing director Eamon McGoldrick said: “We are strongly urging government/DWP to halt the roll out of UC and ‘pause for thought’ until the system works properly for both claimants and landlords.”
The NFA and ARCH said their members generally supported the principles of Universal Credit and had launched initiatives to support tenants into work.
But they warned: “It is clear that support provided to tenants by landlords alone is not sufficient to resolve the problems being experienced and is not scalable as the roll out accelerates across the country and many more families and children become a part of the Universal Credit system.”
ARCH chief executive John Bibby said: “If the level of intensive support needed to vulnerable tenants is to be sustained during the planned rollout additional resources are essential.”
He also called for provision of a transition fund to enable landlords to support vulnerable tenants.
The DWP defines Universal Credit as support for people on low incomes or out of work, intended to ensure they are better off in work than on benefits.
It replaces: income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance; income-related employment and support allowance; income support; working tax credit; child tax credit; housing benefit.
Tossed by the Waves We Will Not Sink: We Stand Together By Our Banner.
I Million Hits for Ipswich Unemployed Action.
Today we have reached a watershed: 1,000,097 hits (16.15 Tuesday).
Ipswich Unemployed Action was founded in 2009.
The Site was created by two people, myself, and a young chap from Ipswich.
The intention was to describe what it’s like being unemployed, and to criticise the various “schemes” put in place to to deal with us.
The aim was to let out of work people say what they think about the way officials and the ‘unemployment business’ treat us – not what we’re told to say.
A bit like the alternative community newspapers of the 1970s,
We have always considered the comments to be the most important part of the Ipswich Unemployed Action site.
We also link to numerous Blogs, notably the always essential reading, the Void.
Apart from the fact that many posts come from people writing here – as well as from people I know in Ipswich – it’s the kind of open and up front things people come out with, the information we exchange with each other, that have given this site its special flavour.
Ipswich Unemployed Action has featured in Private Eye, the Sunday Times, and on Radio Suffolk.
We have been asked by countless other news organisations for information.
My mate from one of the Ipswich estates – produced some of the best posts ever.
But we think that it’s our readers and commentators who matter most.
We have participated in the protests organised by groups such as the DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts), and more recently UNITE Community.
I urge everybody to join UNITE Community – it’s there for the unemployed, for all of us.
Who is sticking up for the Unemployed? Not many. Who is the best placed to do so? Those out of work. Ipswich Unemployed Action is a group of out-of-work local people determined to stand up for our rights.
What are we up against?
The abuses of the ‘New Deal’ scheme. Those who sign-on here know that the YMCA is getting paid to lock up over 150 people in a shed – ‘Dencora House’, doing ‘job search’ all day. They know the conditions they have to endure – treated like children, no proper facilities (computers, even enough toilets). There are no placements. If they complain they are threatened with being ‘exited’ – losing all benefits.
The coming ‘Flexible New Deal’ will be even worse. We intended to expose the company who’s won the local contract A4e – its links with shady senior politicians (step forward David Blunkett), and its record of abusing New Deal participants.
Workfare will be a con – forced labour for our dole with private contractors coining it in.
What do we want?
We want the minimum wage for any ‘voluntary’ work they make us do.
There should be an independent appeal and monitoring system – open to all – for anyone on the ‘New Deal’. Not the present shambles,
We want real training, not the YMCA etc sham.
Above all we want to be treated as human beings – not things the DWP and Government Ministers can claim rights over. We should have rights, and we want them now!
And now, we want the Dencora House detention centre closed down!
This morning I went to Dencora House, Ipswich. For my ‘New Deal’ induction at YMCA Training. A little while in and I was summoned. YMCA manager and colleague. Copies of this Blog, and the Ipswich Unemployed Action’s, on the table. Nervous type. Points to print-out. Picture of medieval Bastille. Legend, “Storm Dencora House“. Liked he it not. Or calling it a “detention centre”. Oh dear. Next, famous (hundreds of viewings), New Deal: YMCA Training, A Major Scandal.
“I have placed this website as the Home Page on all computers at Dencora House today. Hopefully some of my fellow detainees here will read it. There has also been print outs of your articles left around the centre. The staff have been going round ripping them off the walls. They then get put up again.
People who merely found this site as the home page have been undertaking these actions on their own. Hopefully more people will involve themselves in such sabotage. If we make it too much hassle for them to treat us like this then they will be forced to stop!”
The upshot is I face being suspended from all benefits for exercising my (see YMCA Induction Pack), “freedom of conscience”. Apparently human rights do not apply to the out-of-work on the New Deal. Still no doubt they’ll find some way of justifying themselves. YMCA Mission Statement, “Motivated by its Christian faith, YMCA Training’s mission is to inspire individuals to develop their talents and potential and so transform the communities in which they live and work.” Needs some creative re-writing.
Oh yes, one of our many invisible supporters tells us that they’ve blocked their computers’ access to our Blog.
I was reinstated pretty quickly and the YMCA ended up treating me decently.
You wonder what would happen today with the rules they have brought in.
Indeed little did I realise that the YMCA turned out to be sweeties compared to what has happened since.
Particularly after the Liberal-Tory Coalition.
Iain Duncan Smith has stalked the land seeking out poor people to oppress, unelashing the DWP ‘sanction regime’.
The Cameron government has lost no opportunity to let their mates in the ‘unemployment business’ pick the pockets of the state and make the lives of the unemployed a misery.
Ipswich Unemployed Action. 
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