Westminster Works is a large, well-funded learning and employment programme.  It helps local people to get jobs or the training they need to start or re-start their career.  The programme is funded through Westminster City Council, working under the London Council’s ESF co-financing programme. 

Westminster is characterised by relative extremes of wealth and clusters of poverty.  Westminster Works represents the City’s strategy to tackle unemployment and to provide people with the skills, abilities and opportunities they need to find and sustain jobs. 

Westminster Works is structured in two strands, with Westminster Works on Estates managed by Vital Regeneration and Westminster Works through Outreach managed by Paddington Waterside Partnership. 

Westminster Works brings together Vital Regeneration, Paddington Development Trust and Paddington Waterside Partnership with Westminster’s providers of social housing: Peabody, Octavia, Genesis and CityWest Homes.  It also includes two local organisations that support people into employment: Women Like Us and Groundwork. 

Eleven Westminster Works Advisers are based in different areas of the borough, with some based in the most disadvantaged housing estates. 

Job fairs and a campaign of monthly outreach and door knocking help make sure that the service reaches those it is intended for.  Westminster Works aims to reach the long-term unemployed, those who have lost their confidence or are finding it hard to get a job or need help getting started to look for work.

From 2009 to 2011 Westminster Works will support 3125 unemployed people, of whom it is our goal that a minimum of 560 will enter employment.  Others will access training and volunteering opportunities.  This will be achieved through a wide scale outreach programme across the City’s social housing estates, community centres, health centres, libraries, Job Centres, schools and neighbourhood offices.