City strategy

What is Worklessness?

A term used to describe a group of people who could be available for work including lone parents, people claiming Incapacity Benefit, those in receipt of Job Seekers Allowance and people who are not in work but not claiming benefits.

Why is Worklessness a problem?

The close relationship between work, income and wealth and wellbeing is in many ways self-apparent. It is worth stressing that work is central to economic and social issues at the neighbourhood level - not least because the government has put work at the centre of its strategies for neighbourhood renewal. Within Walsall’s Local Area Agreement we have many targets for Worklessness and the size of the problem is increasing.

What is the City Strategy?

The City Strategy Pathfinders initiative was launched in spring 2006 by Secretary of State, John Hutton. In its Green Paper “A New Deal for Welfare: Empowering People to Work" (PDF 1.11MB), the government set our far-reaching proposals for welfare reform aimed at moving towards its national aim of an 80% employment rate for the working age population. A central element of these proposals is a new strategy to tackle the highly localised pockets of worklessness, poverty and low skills and poor health that can be found across the UK, many of them within major towns and cities. A significant proportion of all people on benefits live in these areas, so reducing deprivation and social exclusion within them will be key to the achievement of national employment targets.

The City region partnership bid for and was successful in becoming a pathfinder for the City Strategy. The City Region Consortium brings together all West Midlands metropolitan authorities around Birmingham, the Learning and Skills Council and Jobcentre Plus to plan and pool resources and expertise. The City Strategy is about pooling resources and creating greater flexibilities for local partners to work together within a community to improve economic regeneration through skills, employment and health. Our City Strategy has identified 55 wards across the City Region of which six are in Walsall, these wards are: Blakenall, St Matthews Birchills Leamore, Darlaston South, Palfrey and Pleck.

Each Pathfinder has two client groups – local residents within each Pathfinder area, and business. These initiatives are demand lead and as such, understanding the needs of employers, the opportunities available and the engagement they need with local agencies is paramount to ensure we meet these needs. Equally, working with employers to help them increase the flexibility of opportunities available is essential.

Measure will include an increase in the quality, scale and range of services available to the most disadvantaged groups, including those claiming Incapacity Benefit, lone parents, black and minority ethnic communities and inactive groups outside the benefit system who are not in employment, training or education.

Employers are at the heart of the system, and the City Strategy Core team is putting in place local Employment and Skills Boards to build employer leadership and commitment to City Strategy. They are in the process of developing an improved employer offer and working to ensure that placing takes place on the basis of local labour market needs over the immediate, short, medium and long-term. The team are working to develop a common Employer Recruitment Brokerage Service in which all vacancies are identified and job and skills content scoped to successfully address recruitment and skills shortages. This will inform the development of bespoke packages to provide work ready candidates for specific jobs.

Post-employment job specific training will be encouraged through “Train to Gain”. Support will be given to employers to maintain and maximise productivity of staff.

Who is involved in Walsall?

The Council is represented by the Head of Strategic Regeneration on the Regional Management Group of the City Strategy. The Worklessness Steering Group of PoWER (Partnership for Walsall Enterprise and Regeneration) acts as the Local Management Group for City Strategy and is led by the Economic Regeneration team from the council. This group meets approximately every 4 - 6 weeks and is responsible for developing, commissioning and monitoring actions against Walsall’s Worklessness targets (including those set by the City Strategy). Members curently include JobCentre Plus, the Learning Skills Council, New Deal for Communities, LNP team, Steps to work, Walsall tPCT amongst others.

Worklessness Briefings

The purpose of the Briefing is to monitor Walsall’s progress on the National Indicator 152 – Working Age on Out of Work Benefits. This National Indicator is also one of the new Local Area Agreement targets.

The Worklessness briefing note is updated quarterly. Please find below current and previous briefing notes for you to view and download.

Useful documentation

Adobe PDF

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Useful links

Contact us

Economic Regeneration Team
2^nd Floor, Civic Centre
Darwall St
Walsall
WS1 1TP

Telephone 01922 653620
Email econregen@walsall.gov.uk