Accountability and the Employment Service Agency

Abstract

The Employment Service was set up in the autumn of 1987 when the Government decided to bring together the separate Job Centre local office network, which was then run by the Manpower Services Commission, and the Department of Employment. What was created was a separate quasi-autonomous body. The policy thinking behind this reorganisation was to bring together the job placement services and the benefit payment services into one common structure so that a unified service could be offered to clients. Combining the two separate streams of activity effectively took two years and in December 1989 the Secretary of State announced that the Employment Service would be a candidate for agency status. Agency status as the Employment Service Agency (ESA) was acquired in April 1990. The ESA is then an agency within the Employment Department Group responsible for executing Government policies as agreed by ministers. Its main aim, to quote the Employment Service Operational Plan for 1992–93, is ‘to help promote a competitive and efficient labour market particularly by giving positive help to unemployed people through its job placement service and other programmes and by the payments of benefits and allowances to those entitled to them’.