British Gas gives hope to unemployed youth with its job initiative

British Gas is set to create 1,000 skilled jobs over the next three years, all of which would be filled by unemployed youth across the UK. The job creation initiative, being undertaken by a partnership between environment charity Global Action Plan, British Gas and Accenture, is the result of an recent report by the Work Foundation which finds that since the start of the recession, youth unemployment in the UK has risen faster than any other G8 nation. British Gas recently came under fire for rising its profit expectations after hiking gas prices by 6%.

The Transform partnership, supported by Jobcentre Plus, will give free sustainability training to 1,400 people aged between 17-25, who are currently not in education, employment or training. Every person who successfully completes the course will earn a BTEC qualification and is guaranteed an interview with British Gas. The British Gas ‘green’ job, would be paying around £20,000 as salary. One thousand full-time roles have been created by British Gas, as part of its ECO (Energy Company Obligation) programme, to help deliver housing regeneration projects in local communities, enabling hard-pressed households to become more energy efficient.

While Accenture would support the development of the training through its ‘Skills to Succeed’ programme which is aimed to equip 500,000 people around the world by 2015 with the skills to get a job or build a business, Global Action Plan will help target young unemployed people within the local community and will deliver the training. British Gas’ pilot scheme, which last year trained 27 young people, 17 of whom secured jobs, has already proved to be more successful than the government’s £5bn flagship back-to-work programme, which was branded as ‘extremely poor’ with only 20 of 9,500 former incapacity benefit claimants referred to providers placed in a job that lasted three months or more.