People who are claiming a benefit or receiving state pension may take up training and retain their benefit, although people on jobseeker’s allowance may only take up training part-time. Currently people who are on incapacity benefit for less than 28 weeks, and who are in receipt of housing benefit and council tax benefit, are not entitled to take full-time training to learn new job skills without losing eligibility for that benefit. However, we are revising this situation following the announcement made in “Opportunity, Employment and Progression: making skills work” published jointly with the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills in November 2007. This announcement stated our intention to remove the 16 hour study rule in housing benefit completely for short-term recipients of incapacity benefit; so that they, like long term incapacity benefit claimants, will always be able to take up the training they need to enable them to return to work.
All people below state pension age and claiming relevant benefits can access Department for Work and Pensions training schemes depending on whether they meet other eligibility criteria: for example, someone could be referred to an Employability Skills training programme if they had been assessed as having low literacy, language and numeracy skills and wanted to combine improving these with employability skills.
New deal 50 plus is the only Jobcentre Plus programme directly focused on supporting people aged 50 and over into employment. The programme offers personal adviser support and access to a training grant, worth up to £1500.
The training grant is currently available when an individual aged 50 and over and claiming a qualifying benefit takes up employment after attending a new deal 50 plus interview after six months of benefit dependency. It offers in-work training support to help individuals update existing skills or gain new skills related to their work for up to two years after starting work. The grant can be used for training provided by an employer or through an external training provider or other educational establishment.
Up to £1,200 of the grant can be used for training relevant to the job and a further £300 can be used to pay for life-long learning or skills training that is not job related.