South Lanarkshire provides new employability programme

The inclusiveness Programme is an innovative flexible employability programme managed by South Lanarkshire Council's Routes to Inclusion Team and delivered by South Lanarkshire College at various outreach venues across the area. The programme provides vocational training courses geared towards supporting people living in deprived areas take their first steps back into employment, further education or training.


Find out more about the programme.

New jobs for young people in Third Sector

The Scottish Government is to invest a further £10 million in 2011-12 to support unemployed young people into work and training opportunities in a new programme, Community Jobs Scotland.

The funding will primarily support 16-24 year olds unemployed for six months or more into a job within a third sector organisation in their community. There will also be opportunities for older unemployed people in those areas where unemployment is highest. The initiative will be rolled out across Scotland providing young people with six-month contracts of 25 hours or more per week, for at least the minimum wage.

The SCVO and Scottish Social Enterprise Coalition will work in partnership with Scottish Government to deliver the scheme which will provide opportunities for up to 2,000 participants, to support:

• An opportunity for unemployed people to move into a job in the third sector for a minimum of six months which would allow them to make a contribution to their communities;
• Enhancement of longer term job prospects for participants through concrete job experience;
• Job specific training;
• Additional training which enhances the participant's wider prospects of securing a permanent job; and
• Support for the third sector as it seeks to continue to deliver services to communities across Scotland.

Read more about this scheme.

Latest unemployment and Jobcentre vacancy figures released

The latest January 2011 unemployment and Jobcentre vacancy figures have been published for West Lothian (Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) based figures). As expected, unemployment has risen slightly with seasonal recruitment tailing off, however, West Lothian continues for a fourth month to have an unemployment rate lower than the Scottish average.

• The number of JSA jobless in West Lothian for January is 4,569 up from 4,257 in December. This is an increase of 312 and was expected given the usual seasonal labour market tendency of firms to release temporary staff in December and January.
• West Lothian's unemployment rate of 4.0% is below the Scottish (4.3%) rate; but above the Great Britain (3.7%) rate. West Lothian's unemployment rate ranks joint 11th highest out of all Scottish local authority areas.
• Youth unemployment (18-24 year olds) in West Lothian for January is 1,330. This is an increase of 105 on the last month.
• There were 606 notified Jobcentre vacancies in January - a net decrease of 317 from December 2010. This is again an expected seasonal trend – there were 632 vacancies in January 2010.
• The ratio of jobseekers to jobcentre vacancies stands at 8 jobseekers for every vacancy advertised in West Lothian jobcentres. In comparison, Scotland's ratio is 10:1, Great Britain is 6.2:1 with Orkney having the highest ratio of 33.9 (34 jobseekers for every vacancy) of claimants to vacancies of Scottish local authorities.