Seventy percent rise in jobs for disabled people

Remploy recorded a 70 per cent increase in the number of disabled people it supported into jobs in mainstream employment in the first quarter of this year.

This record number of job entries has been achieved while the company is in consultation with stakeholders on its proposals for a strategic shift to enable it to quadruple the number of jobs it finds for disabled people in mainstream employment.

Bob Warner, Remploy Chief Executive, said: ìThese new figures show that investing in preparing and training disabled people for mainstream employment works. In the last 15 months we have opened seven city centre recruitment branches around the UK and we are now seeing the benefits.

ìAlmost 30 per cent of the disabled people we helped to find a job went through the branches and we will be increasing the network to 20 branches by the end of the year.î

In the first three months of the financial year ended in June, Remploy placed almost 1,500 disabled people into employment and added 10,500 vacancies to its books. At any one time Remploy has more than 1,800 vacancies available.

Last year Remploy found jobs for more than 5,000 disabled people which for the first time exceeded the number of employees in its 83 factories. Jobs in the factories each cost an average of 20,000 a year compared with a one-off cost of 5,000 to place a disabled person with an outside employer.

Remploy is consulting with its trade unions over proposals announced in May which involve the closure of 32 factories and the merger of a further 11 factories with a nearby site. There will also be savings of 50m from reductions in management and overhead costs.

Around 2,270 disabled people and 280 non-disabled employees are affected by the changes, out of a total of 6,500 employees, but the company has guaranteed that there will be no compulsory redundancies for disabled employees.

Mr Warner said: ìThe changes we have proposed mean that by 2012 we will be finding jobs for 20,000 people every year.

ìDisabled people tell us that they would prefer to work in open employment with non-disabled colleagues and employers are now more aware of the skills and abilities disabled people bring to their business.î