Pertemps, Serco and a college in Newcastle are among those selected in the West Midlands to deliver the Government’s new multibillion-pound scheme to help people find jobs.
Meriden-based Pertemps, Solihull-based FourstaR Employment and Skills and Newcastle College Group have been named preferred bidders to run the Government’s Work Programme in Birmingham, Solihull and the Black Country.
Outsourcing firm Serco and The Employability and Skills Group (ESG) have been selected to run the programmes in Coventry, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and the Marches.
Ministers said the groups would be given freedom to design support packages for jobseekers and will be paid by results, with more money being given for moving the hardest-to-help off benefits.
Contracts will be worth between £3 billion and £5 billion over seven years, with organisations being paid using benefit savings made from getting people into work.
Across the country, hundreds of voluntary sector groups including Mencap, the Citizens Advice Bureau and the Prince’s Trust have been selected to run the scheme.
Employment Minister Chris Grayling said: "This is a radical change to the way we deliver back to work support in this country.
"For the first time those charities and voluntary sector organisations across the country with the know-how to help people with real difficulties in their communities get back to work are being given the chance to do just that.
"Millions of people on out of work benefits who have previously been shunted from dole queue to training room to dole queue again will finally be able to access support that’s built around their needs."
In the first two years the Work Programme is expected to help around a million people, making it the largest single welfare to work programme this country has ever seen.
