West Essex Partnership

The Local Strategic Partnerships for Epping Forest, Harlow and Uttlesford exist to promote and enhance the economic, social and environmental well being of their communities. The three LSP's have come together in the West Essex Partnership (WEP) to examine new opportunities for joint working across existing boundaries that will help them enhance 'value for money' and better deliver on behalf of their communities individually and collectively.

Recent Successes

West Essex Organisations successfully bid for Government's Future Jobs Fund

Almost 160 local young people will get new jobs, training and work experience after a successful bid to the Government's Future Jobs Fund by West Essex organisations. The West Essex Partnership (encompassing the Harlow, Uttlesford and Epping Forest Local Strategic Partnerships) has been awarded just over £1million to assist young people who have been unemployed for approaching a year.

The bid was led by Harlow Council but the jobs and training places will be spread between dozens of local public sector and social enterprise organisations including Harlow Council, Harlow District Chamber of Commerce, Kier Harlow, Harlow Welfare Rights and Advice, Epping Forest District Council, Epping Forest College, Uttlesford District Council, Organic Countryside and Walden Local Food.

The project will run until March 2011 and the posts will be of six month duration. These posts will be offered in two stages (79 jobs per stage) and aimed at 18-24 year olds who have been on Job Seekers Allowance for approaching 12 months and other long term unemployed people. All of the jobs will pay at least the minimum wage and none of the new jobs are replacing existing roles or vacancies. All applicants will initially be referred to the scheme from JobcentrePlus and will need to go through a recruitment and selection process for the jobs.

The scheme will be managed by Employ-Ability and during the course of the job the young people will receive support to help them improve their future job prospects. All of the employees will have a guaranteed offer to work for a NVQ level 2 in customer services or equivalent and they will be offered other workplace training and help with preparing a CV.

Leader of Harlow Council Cllr Andrew Johnson said:

"We are delighted with this funding - the jobs could not have been created without it and during this difficult time it is young people that have suffered worst from the lack of employment opportunities. All of the posts are in environmental or social enterprise environments and will be supported with training to help the young people gain permanent work once the six month period comes to an end."

In a statement, the three Chairs of the Harlow, Uttlesford and Epping Forest Local Strategic Partnerships - Jackie Sully, Howard Rolfe and Diana Collins said:

"This project is all about giving young unemployed people from our area a better chance to get into local employment through a quality local programme put together by the three local partnerships coordinating their activities across West Essex. Hopefully these posts will give our young people the skills, experience and confidence they need to get into permanent employment. It will bring over £1 million of additional funding into our local economies at a time of increased need. Importantly it will also provide additional support to a network of local agencies and voluntary groups who are part of the scheme, to enable them to meet increased demands on their services."

The first of the new roles commenced in January 2010.

Future Jobs Fund Extension

Confirmation has been received from the Department for Work and Pensions that the West Essex Partnership has been awarded funding for more jobs it plans to provide under the Future Jobs Fund, There are now 46 individuals in post and it is fully expected that the remainder will be in post in the near future. For the second stage of funding, the partnership applied to repeat its first 70 posts and increased the total to 95 with the addition of new jobs from the PCT and others. The roll out of the new jobs will commence from July 2010.

The WEP School Prize Giving Project

The WEP School Prize Giving Project during June/July has enabled the three districts to award prizes in specific categories to local students whose primary schools wished to participate in the initiative. Certificates have been awarded at school assemblies and separate celebratory events have been held within the three districts for the students, their parents and teachers to attend, whereby book tokens have been handed out as part of the award.

Role of the West Essex Partnership

The West Essex Partnership Terms of Reference can be downloaded as a PDF here.

Contact us

The West Essex Partnership has a contact in each of the three partner districts. They are:

John Houston - One Epping Forest

Email - jhouston@eppingforestdc.gov.uk
Tel - 01992 564094

Marina Sherriff - Harlow 2020

Email - marina.sherriff@harlow.gov.uk
Tel - 01279 446831

Gaynor Bradley - Uttlesford Futures

Email - gbradley@uttlesford.gov.uk
Tel - 01799 510348