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Associations spend £70m a year tackling unemployment
Housing associations spend more than £70m a year supporting tenants into work, new research has revealed.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) released research today on the figure spent supporting out-of-work tenants to rejoin the jobs market. It is more than half the £130m expected to be spent next year by the government’s flagship Work and Health Programme.
The IPPR said that despite a record employment rate, there was still a high level of unemployment among adults living in housing association properties, with unemployment twice the national average and economic inactivity three times higher.
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But government programmes to tackle unemployment tended to bypass housing associations in favour of outsourcing to large private providers.
Joe Dromey, senior research fellow at the IPPR, said:“Housing associations play a crucial role in supporting their tenants to access work and in tackling poverty in their local communities.
“But nationally commissioned employment and skills services have failed to work with them, and have failed to support people who face the greatest barriers to work.”
Mr Dromey said power and funding should be devolved locally with housing associations working with local authorities in partnerships to help people access jobs.
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The IPPR also called for the creation of local work and health partnerships – including housing associations – to oversee the Work and Health Programme, and for councils and landlords to use their procurement power to encourage investment in local job creation.
Lynsey Sweeney, managing director of social housing employment and skills consortium Give Us A Chance – which supported the research – said: “Helping social housing tenants into work and out of the poverty trap is a core focus for our members and much of the wider social housing sector.
“These recommendations set out how the government can better support the housing sector as it works to drive down unemployment and economic inactivity among social housing tenants.”
