The Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham told the Work and Pensions Committee local charities had told him people were leaving the centres ‘feeling worse than they went in’
Andy Burnham has suggested DWP Jobcentres should be rebranded as he said some benefit claimants fear them.
The Greater Manchester Mayor told the Work and Pensions Committee local charities had told him people were leaving the centres “feeling worse than they went in”. He said: “To me it brought over the need for a paradigm shift, turning Jobcentres from places people may fear or see in quite a negative way and we needed to turn that round and make them empowering, supportive, enabling.”
Mr Burnham referred to Manchester’s Live Well programme, which provides advice on housing, the “corrosive effects” of debts, and getting back into work. He told MPs on the Committee on Tuesday: “I would like Jobcentre Plus to be renamed Live Well centres. In the name it should be positive – it should say to the public ‘you are going to be helped when you come in here’.
“It’s not just the name. It’s what happens when you go inside. What’s the atmosphere like? What’s it like to be in there? I just think there’s a huge opportunity.
“The DWP estate is not – in my view – sufficiently integrated into everything else Greater Manchester is doing. It can feel like an outlier in our communities, part of the fabric, the place where lives are changed in a really positive way. It isn’t seen like that at this moment in time. I don’t see why it can’t be seen like that but it does point to some fairly fundamental changes.”
DWP minister Alison McGovern has previously told The Mirror that Jobcentres are Britain’s most unloved public services as she promised to overhaul them. She has already set out plans at the “tick box culture” at the centres where claimants are forced to spend just 10 minutes in a repetitive way before being “turned away”.
On Tuesday Mr Burnham also criticised how benefits policy is created. He said under all governments it has often “been written to create headlines to please certain newspapers and not actually do the job of encouraging the recovery of people to a better position in their life.”
His comments come as the government faces intense pressure cuts to the welfare system with billions slashed from sickness and disability benefits.
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