Home of Full Monty and Brassed Off becomes crucible for Labour's 'Get Britain Working' plan: Chris Burn
Back in the 1990s, South Yorkshire was the setting for two superb films that mixed great moments of humour with unflinching commentary on the devastating impacts that high unemployment can have on a community.
Almost 30 years on from Brassed Off and The Full Monty, the nature of joblessness in South Yorkshire has evolved but widespread problems still endure.
However the region may be about to write a much-more positive new chapter as the crucible for Labour’s new plan to ‘Get Britain Working Again’.
Back in summer, a few short weeks after Labour was elected back into office, new Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall was invited up to Barnsley for the launch of the town’s Pathways to Work Commission report.
The report, which was chaired by former Health Secretary Alan Milburn after he was asked to participate by Barnsley Council leader Sir Steve Houghton, appears on the face of it to have heavily influenced the formal national proposals being put forward this week by the Government to reimagine employment support services and the way job centres operate.
As Mr Milburn told me last week, when he grew up in the North-East he witnessed the devastation caused by mass unemployment due to a lack of available jobs.
That has changed to a new type of crisis in which employers are often desperately looking for staff to fill vacancies but ‘economic inactivity’ – often linked to poor health – means there are still millions out of work.
In Barnsley there are 42,000 people not in paid work or looking for a job due to personal circumstances but research by the Pathways to Work commission found 70 per cent of those affected would like to find employment.
The research identified an extraordinary 67 different services in Barnsley offering support for people in this position, which the report said was “impossible to navigate” for those affected.
It said that is contributing to a “catastrophic systems failure” in which 80 per cent of economically inactive people in South Yorkshire are receiving benefits but only 10 per cent having to take steps to find work.
The report recommended a project in Barnsley that would be then rolled out across South Yorkshire and involve a new multi-agency approach to tackling joblessness.
That call for a “radically new approach” was praised by Ms Kendall and the DWP’s White Paper published this week seems to have taken those findings and run with them.
It is no surprise that South Yorkshire has been chosen as one of the ‘trailblazer’ pilot areas.
Indeed the region’s mayor Oliver Coppard, who will lead the South Yorkshire initiative, was rightly quoted in the Government’s press release on the White Paper discussing how his area has “led the way in highlighting the importance of bringing work, health and skills together as we support people back into employment”.
Time will tell whether it will work and there will be no shortage of challenges in delivering – not least in ensuring that there is sufficient funding for future years. But if it succeeds, this will be a positive story of a different kind that has been made in South Yorkshire.
Chris Burn is head of business and features for The Yorkshire Post