Waltham Forest jobs is council's top priority post-Covid

A report last month revealed one in 10 working age residents in the borough are now out of work, while the number claiming benefits has more than doubled.

Of the businesses that were trading last year, one out of every 20 was forced to dissolve by May as lockdown battered the economy.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, council leader Clare Coghill said the council aimed to help residents who have lost their jobs retrain and make the borough “as attractive to businesses as possible”.

'It's never been more important'

She said: “Jobs have always been a priority but even more so now.... it’s never been more important.

“We need to be making sure people can access training to get the skills they need to progress in their jobs or even to change jobs.”

She said the council hopes to help residents get “the type of jobs increasingly available in London”, such as in the tech industry, and take advantage of the borough’s location.

In addition to proximity to Shoreditch, historically the centre of London tech, the borough is also in the UK’s “innovation corridor”, which stretches from London to Cambridge and is an important region for advanced technology and bioscience.

Read more: Half of Walthamstow families lives on less than £18,000 a year

Cllr Coghill said the council is focusing on its relationships with its own adult learning service and the borough’s further education institutions, such as Waltham Forest College.

In particular, she highlighted the success of the Adult Learning Service’s work with TSS, a security company based in Highams Park, over the last three years.

In 2017, TSS took on its first apprentice from the service. Following the success of this attempt, it now has seven apprentices at once and has given six people full-time jobs.

The council received 17,000 requests for financial help in April this year, more than five times the number of requests made the year before.

The number of residents claiming unemployment benefits, less than 8,000 in February, has risen to more than 18,000.

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