By Georgia Hussey
Lambeth council will put £465,000 into a new scheme to get residents into work.
The move comes as Lambeth tries to deal what the council says is the highest number of Jobseekers’ Allowance claimants in any London borough. Councillors said at a meeting on Monday that 12,000 residents were claiming the benefit.
The new funding aims to help Lambeth residents gain access to some of the 32,000 jobs that are expected be created in the area over the next 20 years, most of which will be in Vauxhall, Waterloo and Nine Elms.
Labour councillor Jack Hopkins acknowledged that the council had not prioritised employment in the past, and said the project, called Lambeth Working, marked a “cultural shift”.
“This is about looking not just at traditional things that the council does or doesn’t do,” he said at Monday’s council meeting, when the scheme was approved.
“It’s about looking at the citizens in the borough and understanding we have a commitment to all of our people.”
The initiative will work closely with Jobcentre Plus and Lambeth College to build links between employers, schools, colleges and training organisations to make sure some of the tens of thousands of jobs created by regeneration projects such as those in Nine Elms and Vauxhall go to local residents looking for work.
[…] He was clear about what he wants to achieve at a high level (“homes and jobs”), the challenges in his way (a 50 million pound hole in the Lambeth Housing Standard budget; central government’s determination to make planning a free-for-all) and his strategies for improving the prospects of local jobseekers (build a platform so Brixton can be on the Overground and people can commute to new jobs being created in Nine Elms; require developers and incoming businesses to run their recruitment through the council’s Job Brokerage scheme. […]