Cash flows from Brussels to help east London’s low-paid—despite ‘Brexit’

A training and education organisation has won an EU deal to help families in east London on low pay—just three months before the UK triggers the ‘Brexit’ op-out.

The Prospects employment and care company has won contracts from the European Social Fund and the Skills Funding Agency to help low-pay workers trigger their own ‘exit’ from the poverty trap.

The contracts run until August next year—more than a year into the ‘quit Europe’ period—to support 3,000 workers across east London in Tower Hamlets and neighbouring Hackney, Newham, Greenwich and Waltham Forest, as well as Redbridge, Barking, Havering, Haringey and Enfield.

Another 1,650 low-pay workers will be helped in Islington, The City, Camden, Westminster, Kensington, Wandsworth, Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham.

The organisation is being commissioned to find ways to support people to get better paid, more stable jobs, and to help businesses increase staff skills and productivity.

It is to work with the National Careers Service to find those who need extra support, particularly working parents, adapted around their childcare needs which are often a barrier to getting the right help.

Britain had more working households in poverty in 2012 than those without jobs—and it is getting worse. Research by Trust for London shows 43 per cent of part-time jobs paying poverty wages in 2016, compared to 30pc before the financial crash.