Employment opportunities are important in Northumberland and we've been working on creating oppo
Employment opportunities:
● We have committed £5 million to developing the next phase of the Ashington Blyth Tyne passenger train line to Newcastle. The County Council’s cabinet unanimously approved that the project will progress to GRIP Stage 3 (Network Rails project development process) in October 2016.
● Through our Local Sustainable Transport Fund programme we have reached out to 15,000 employees across the county to encourage travel to work by sustainable means and supported nearly 500 job seekers by providing personalised travel training.
● In February 2016 a new £2 million grant fund was announced to support rural businesses, farms wishing to diversify and new tourism initiatives in the South Tynedale area of Northumberland.
● The Council is working to promote the markets taking place across the county and welcomed Berwick’s first teenage market.
● We have united the range of trading activities and initiatives carried out at our learning disability day centres under our Made in Northumberland brand. The brand enables us to promote all the products and showcase the diversity of council services including catering from the Pottergate Centre, furniture recycling from the Tynedale Centre in Hexham, and jewellery and photography sales from Northstar in Berwick.
● The pilot Rural Growth Network Programme (which closed in September 2015)
provided support to over 1,000 businesses to the value of £2.91m, leveraging
£2.5m private sector investments and creating/safeguarding 333 jobs.
● Delivery of the new Rural Growth Network Programme – commenced 1st April
2015 supporting micro and medium sized businesses to grow the rural economy in Northumberland, Gateshead and Durham. By the end of the first year a total of six businesses had received grant funding of £1,582,486 leveraging a further
£192,851 of public funding and £124,000 of private sector investment. the programme is targeted to create or safeguard a total of 260 jobs.
● The Business Northumberland Programme (which closed in September 2015) provided support to 539 pre-start, 59 new and 129 existing businesses resulting in the creation of 96 businesses and the creation/safeguarding of 206 jobs.
● The iNorthumberland Business Support Programme ended on 31st December
2015 having provided support to over 900 businesses and funding to 85 to upgrade their standard broadband connection to a superfast connection. as a direct result of this programme 30 jobs were created and a further 20 safeguarded.
● A new Business Northumberland Programme has been secured with funding from the European Regional Development Programme for England 2014-2020 which was approved in May 2016. These funds will be used to deliver a fully funded Business Support programme which will strengthen our provision of business support services across Northumberland and beyond. This programme will be known as Business Northumberland 2016-19.
● In March 2016 Northumberland County Council launched a new web tool to help users find career information from the region. The resource is being used by staff working with young people and unemployed adults, schools and post-16 learning providers to help students and those looking for work to plan appropriately and prepare for future employment demand.
● Working parents in Northumberland are leading the way as they benefit from 30 hours of free childcare for three- and four-year olds a year to make it easier for these parents to work before it is rolled out nationwide. The Government
announced £13 million for a number of councils, including Northumberland, to offer the extended entitlement to some parents from September 2016. There will be a national roll-out in 2017.
