At the site of the local Cheltenham and Gloucester which was killed off after it was taken over by Lloyds TSB, (employees at HBOS should note), we now have a branch of something called 'Reed in Partnership'. The expansive floor space and huge number of shiny new desks and chairs in this open plan office tells me there is some government funding thrown wastefully somewhere into this mix on our High Street. And sure enough, when I looked them up, there on their website we see the usual fine sounding but ill-defined New Labour mantras, about the organisation 'being not interested in short-term fixes, but working with the right partners to ensure long term positive change in local communities', offering 'flexible solutions' and 'engaging and listening'.
According to the website, this cosy little set-up has been 'ongoing' since 1998, in which decade they have 'helped over 80,000 people into employment'. That works out at an average of 8,000 a year throughout the whole country, even in the boom years, so I'd be interested to know what these friends of New Labour have been costing us in all that time and what their methods will achieve in a recession, now that the jobless are numbering a couple of million.
Their website does not provide financial, management or ownership information about Reed, nor is it possible to find out how many of these offices they are operating. The website also does not indicate that they are part of a less than transparent group of companies under the Reed moniker that was once a public limited company listed on the stock exchange but which has since passed into private ownership. My researches suggested the whole group is actually a multi-site organisation with over 250 premises in the UK and that it seems to have its lips firmly sucking away at the taxpayers' teat under New Labour, providing 'a range of services' including temporary staffing, outsourcing, training and assessment, and other related 'specialty recruitment services'. Various manifestations of the Reed brand include Reed Solutions, Reed Personnel Services, Reed Accountancy, Reed Insurance, Reed Technology, Reed Learning, Reed Connections, Reed Nurse, Reed Doctor, Reed Health and Reed Social Care.
So what, I imagine people saying. What does it matter? Here they are in Walthamstow, and trying to offer people an opportunity to find work. Public money being spent on doing something. Well, at one level, that's great, though we already have a Job Centre Plus trying to match the jobless to work situated not many yards away from the Reed in Partnership's Walthamstow premises. The duplication seems pointless to me. And their record does not suggest they have been all that successful in the last decade in which they have enjoyed New Labour patronage for their business.
There are a number of other aspects of their presence which are not so great in my view. For one thing they are taking up a valuable shop frontage for a welfare to work scheme which could be sited practically anywhere else in the Borough and using government money to deny a trading site to a retailer (who can't just take over an off-High Street office suite to sell their wares).
And I have concerns about the kind of jobs are they trying to shoehorn people into. A look at the meager selection in the windows, which have been repeated either side of the door to make it look like there are roughly twice as many as there really are, include a number of jobs at minimum wage which require the people they pressure into taking them to travel all over London to get there. These include a job at minimum wage at the Science Museum, an establishment which really should be ashamed of themselves. The fact that the best paying job on offer is for a 'nail technician' in Enfield town tells me a lot about the Britain that New Labour and their partners, Reed, have created in the last 10 years.
I won't tell you exactly what the unimpressed man who I chatted to about these job adverts outside Reed's offices said to me earlier this afternoon, but I can tell you it did involve (theoretically, I'm sure) the application of what firemen call an accellarent.
Between St George's Jewellers and Ferdin Fabrics.