Jobcentre Plus
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Jobcentre Plus (Canolfan Byd Gwaith in Welsh) is the government-funded employment agency facility and the social security office in the United Kingdom, often operated from a high street shop. The agency was formerly titled the Employment Service, which operated Jobcentres and existed alongside separate social security benefits offices, until their merger and re-branding as Jobcentre Plus in 2002. It has executive agency status within the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Jobcentre Plus typically provides resources to enable the unemployed find work, including posting vacant job listings using a computer system called LMS (Labour Market System) which can be accessed by customers through Jobpoints (touch-screen computer terminals), providing job-search help and information about training opportunities, and administering unemployment benefits such as Jobseeker's Allowance.
Recent major cuts to Civil Service staffing levels mean that Jobcentre Plus is no longer able to provide help to jobseekers of all categories as it traditionally has done, eg, those who are already employed or those who are unemployed but not claiming any benefits. Staff of the Department for Work and Pensions have been instructed to give help only to those in so-called "high priority groups", ie, those who are long-term claimants of Jobseekers Allowance, lone parents or those receiving other benefits such as Income Support or Incapacity Benefit.
Alongside these changes, Jobcentre Plus is changing the way in which claims to benefits are procesed. In the past, claimants were asked to complete forms and booked an interview with an adviser in order to submit them for processing. The new system involves individuals wishing to claim calling one of the Jobcentre Plus regional Strategic Contact Centres at which point they will be filtered for eligibility and given a time when they will be called back, so that additional details can be gathered.
Emphasis is now placed upon jobseekers performing their own search for work, using the facilities of the Jobcentre Plus or the department's website, and making contact through a call centre called Jobseeker Direct or through interactive TV.
Together with the drastic cuts to staffing levels, these major changes are the subject of much internal controversy within the department and are being opposed by the trades unions representing staff, such as the Public and Commercial Services Union, whose members (as at January 2006) have been balloted and have voted in favour of strike action.
In September 2005, a memo leaked to the PCS revealed alleged plans to privatise Jobcentre Plus, although this was denied by the then Work and Pensions Secretary, David Blunkett. Since then it has emerged that DWP Minister of State Margaret Hodge and high-level civil servants are conducting a feasibility study to consider the outsourcing of some Jobcentre work.
In March 2006, Minister of State Margaret Hodge and Jobcentre Plus management were severely criticised by a House of Commons Parliamentary Select Committee for failing to disclose the failings within Jobcentre Plus and for its management of staff cuts. Jobcentre Plus management also drew criticism by the cross party committee of Members of Parliament for introducing new IT-based benefit systems and procedures that were not fully tried or tested before their introduction.
The Select Committee highlighted what they described as a "catastrophic failure" and a "truly appalling" level of service provided by Jobcentre Plus in the summer of 2005. The report concluded that the staff cuts (planned at 30,000) within Jobcentre Plus had been poorly planned and implemented by management and should be slowed.
Unions and staff continue to protest (April 2006) at the inadequacies of the service offered to customers, particularly the so-called low-priority groups (those looking for employment who are already employed or not claiming benefit), those experiencing redundancy, and the hundreds of thousands jobseekers from the Accession states of the European Union, who are currently being turned away.
External links
- [Jobcentre Plus]
- [Public and Commercial Services Union]
- [The Guardian]
- [Restart The Musical - Jobcentre-related Theatrical satire]
- [BBC report into the Work and Pensions Select Committee report into job cuts and poor services at Jobcentre Plus]
- [March 2006 Select Committee report into Efficiency Savings Programme in Jobcentre Plus]
- [Written and Oral evidence submitted to the Work and Pensions Select Committee into the failure of the Efficiency Savings Programme in Jobcentre Plus]
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