A senior government official has ruled out changing the Jobcentre Plus website to allow links to other public sector job sites.
Sir Leigh Lewis, permanent secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions, insisted the move was unnecessary as he opened one of the final Jobcentre Plus offices last week.
The Selly Oak Jobcentre Plus office in Birmingham marks the end of a five-year project to combine the old job centres and social security offices under one roof. The modernised Jobcentre Plus system also has a website that saw a record 6.6 million job searches in one week last month.
However, there has been criticism that the website does not help employers or employees by linking to other job sites.
But Lewis told Personnel Today: “The Jobcentre Plus database takes an awful lot of jobs from employers, including large organisations and private sector recruiters.
“The real future is the Direct Gov website, from which you can find the Jobcentre Plus website and also many others – including almost every other public sector site. We are focusing on the Direct Gov site now.”
Lewis added that the Jobcentre Plus offices and website had made “an enormous difference” to the problem of unemployment.
The proportion of lone parents in work has grown from 44% to almost 56% in the past 10 years, he pointed out.
Department for Work and Pensions
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