Last updated at 12:19, Tuesday, 17 March 2009

The closure of three JobCentres across north and west Cumbria is adding to the pain of soaring unemployment, it has been claimed.

The Tories said the loss of the JobCentres at Cockermouth, Keswick and Millom last year was forcing those joining the dole queues to travel further to look for work.

According to figures given to the Conservatives in a parliamentary written answer, unemployment has risen by 52 per cent in Workington and 30.5 per cent in Copeland compared with January last year and the start of this year.

Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell has since announced a moratorium on closures as the recession bites harder – but was accused of acting too late.

Tory work spokeswoman Theresa May said: “Mr Purnell has been caught red-handed trying to dupe the public.” He is being negligent, arrogant and incompetent in allowing this to go ahead.

“Instead of providing extra support when unemployment began to rise, Labour continued their programme of jobcentre closures. Now unemployment is rising by over 100 per cent in some areas – and there simply aren’t the resources to cope.”

Mr Purnell defended the closures in Cumbria saying all of the JobCentres were small sites which were over-resourced in order to maintain the health and safety of staff and customers. Closing the site enabled additional support to customers in the larger conurbations to be provided, according to the Department for Work and Pensions.

A spokesman for James Purnell said: “We know it is harder for people to find work at the moment and that’s why we have invested £2bn extra money into helping people find work, including hiring more than 500 new staff across the North West, with nearly 200 more due to be in post by next month.”

“By modernising the Jobcentre Plus network we have radically reduced the cost to taxpayer whilst actually improving our service so that now benefit claims are processed faster and we offer more work-focused job interviews for job seekers.”

The statistics were released ahead of tomorrow’s jobless figures, which could see the nationwide total top two million.

First published at 11:36, Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk