Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the impact on the employment rate in Newport West constituency of the Welsh-based financial services company Admiral closing its Newport office.

No assessment has been made.

Where redundancies do occur, the Department for Work and Pensions’ Rapid Response Service (RRS) works to address the effects of job losses on individuals and on the local community. The RRS work with employers to deliver flexible, timely, and appropriate support for them and their employees and help individuals secure a job or move into self-employment quickly and ideally without the need to claim welfare benefits.

The RRS is available to private and public sector employers. Third sector employers are also eligible where the job losses affect paid workers. The RRS support can start when people are under threat of redundancy or during the period of notice.

Where individuals have not found alternative work before they lose their job, RRS support can continue for a further 13 weeks whether they make a claim for benefits or not. This is in addition to the ongoing support provided by DWP for claimants moving them forward in their journey closer to/back into employment.

DWP has provided additional support to help people into work since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, through our Plan for Jobs, including recruiting an additional 13,500 Work Coaches to provide support to unemployed people to find a job, and launching new schemes like Kickstart, Restart and Sector Work Academies Programmes.