ICT project Service Birmingham gets disadvantaged into work

Birmingham-based ICT project "Service Birmingham" has announced that it has provided 126 disadvantaged people with employment since it was launched a year ago.

The creation of these jobs is the result of a Jobs and Skills Charter signed by the project and Birmingham City Council last spring.

Recruits have included long-term unemployed, lone parents, disabled people and the socially or economically deprived.

Service Birmingham is a project set up by ICT services company Capita and Birmingham City Council's IT department, to provide IT services to the council's revenue service and contact centre as well as Birmingham City Council itself.

The Jobs and Skills Charter has seen the council's employment access team work with local recruiters in the city to identify potential candidates and assess their capability before forwarding suitable applicants to Service Birmingham for interview as part of the council's commitment to create jobs in the city.

Some 40 of the 127 are "homeworkers", based at home but providing frontline services as part of Service Birmingham's contact centre operation. Many of the group work flexible shifts, fitting their working schedules around caring responsibilities.

Welcoming the success of the scheme, Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council, Councillor Paul Tilsley, said: "The Jobs and Skills Charter is helping to secure decent jobs for Birmingham people from groups that traditionally struggle to enter the labour market.

"This charter is delivering on the ambition we set it and the success of the recruits shows that no group of people should ever be overlooked by employers."