CITY OF PRESTON LABOUR PARTY

Labour Councillors in Preston have demanded more urgent action on ‘Worklessness’ in Preston as the council's Cabinet decide to appoint a new senior officer to tackle the issue.

At a meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee Labour Councillor for Fishwick Martyn Rawlinson criticised the executive for the delay in deciding how to tackle unemployment rates in the city. The government report on the issue titled ‘Working Neighbourhoods Fund’ was published six months ago yet the council are no nearer to implementing any new initiatives centred on the cycle of unemployment in deprived areas.

Councillor Rawlinson, Labour’s finance spokesman said, ‘I’m very disappointed on the lack of progress being made. The government have handed the council millions of pounds to look into this problem yet it’s going to be months down the line before a new officer is in place and is making recommendations about how the money should be spent. Have the Tories no ideas of their own?

There are some very obvious causes of worklessness in deprived communities as outlined in the report like poor literacy and low self esteem and we could be tackling those now. The Neighbourhood Management Boards are ideally placed to help implement this kind of activity until the cabinet get their act together. Physical regeneration of deprived neighbourhoods also needs to take place in order to raise economic prosperity in place like Fishwick and St Matthews.’ 

Labour Councillors made recommendations prior to the Cabinet meeting and were backed by opposition members on Scrutiny.

Background Information

1. The Working Neighbourhoods Fund in effect replaces Neighbourhood Renewal Funding which placed more emphasis on physical regeneration of deprived areas.
2. The Working Neighbourhoods Fund draws together several streams of government funding to tackle the cycle of poverty and deprivation caused by a culture of worklessness.
3. The funding has not been ring-fenced by the government in an attempt to encourage councils to be more creative and innovative in their attempts to tackle worklessness.
4. Preston has received more than £10 million over three years to tackle worklessness. The Preston Employment Partnership has already been engaged to help deliver on the Local Area Agreement targets.