DWP Help to Work (Community Work Programme) 

Press Release from Cllr  Ian Maher

I, as Sefton Council’s Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Regeneration and Tourism along with Sefton’s Labour Group of Councillors, believe that the Help to Work scheme, along with other increased Claimant Conditionality measures introduced from April 2014, will lead to increased poverty and distress among our workless communities as more people will face a greater threat of benefit sanctions.

This removes claimants’ ability to sustain a reasonable quality of life for themselves and their family members whilst looking for employment.  It also exposes claimants who experience benefit reductions to the risk of problem debt.  In particular, Sefton Council takes the view that the enforced deployment of workless people into full time work schemes is ineffective at promoting longer term sustainable employment and positive attitudes to re-engagement in the workforce, stigmatises benefits claimants and locks them further into poverty.

 As such I have produced a report that is currently being progressed that says:

  Sefton Council will not be involved in the direct delivery of Community Work Placement Programme.

Sefton Council will not provide opportunities for Community Work Placement within any of its departments.

Sefton Council should take all reasonable steps to ensure that its contractors or service providers do not use unpaid claimants engaged on the Community Work Placement Scheme to undertake any contracts or services on its behalf.

Cllr. Ian Maher

Deputy Leader of Sefton Council and

Cabinet Member for Regeneration and Tourism