More than 30,000 people were claiming Universal Credit (UC) in Bolton up until September 10, the latest figures reveal.

There were a total of 30,565 UC claimants, which had increased by 665 new claimants from August 13.

Bolton South East recorded the highest number of claimants with 12,979. Meanwhile, Bolton North East had 11,620 UC claimants and Bolton West had the least with 8,015.

The figure for the alternative claimant count, which reflects those who are actively looking for work and does not include those who are ill or are shielding, is 16,105 as of August 20.

People aged 18-24 make up 2,988 of those claimants.

Staff at Bolton Jobcentre Plus have been working hard to help those who are unemployed get back into work.

Penny Applegate, partnership manager at Bolton Jobcentre plus, said: “Obviously I wouldn’t say we have a buoyant jobs market, but we do have vacancies come up every so often, we are seeing roles come up in different sectors.

“For example we have done a lot of recruiting in the civil service, and we are also seeing vacancies in care work and and logistics come up from time to time.

“We’re often finding many places don’t have to advertise as people are applying for jobs as soon as they are made redundant.

"Currently our biggest firm we are working with is Tesco, we have been doing a lot with them.

“Of course we are seeing an increase in the number of people who are out of work, but it is a lot more gradual than what we saw at the start of lockdown.

“People are still getting into work which is encouraging. What is important right now is to see what transferable skills you have, everyone has experiences that they can bring to a different role.

“Look at areas where there are vacancies and see if you have skills relevant for those industries.”

In September the Government launched the Kickstart Scheme with the specific aim of helping young people by providing them with six month paid work placements. Alongside this, the Jobcentre is running several programmes targeting different groups.

Penny said: “We are still waiting for the Kickstart scheme to get fully up and running, we have a number of employers who are interested. Hopefully that will start ramping up, we’ve had lots of businesses put in offers so these are just waiting for approval.

“At the moment we are promoting the Sector Work Academy Programme which will help people find work in other sectors. This programme helps give those individuals a bit more extra support in order to make that cross over into a different sector.

“For example, we might have someone working in hospitality who could make the move into care work, as they will have overlapping skills."

“There is also a guaranteed interview within the programme, 50 per cent of people will get a job with that employer.

“Our Rapid Response Service helps those who are made redundant on a large scale where 21 people or more have lost their jobs.

“This means we can give a little bit extra support to help them get back into work."

She added: “We are doing what we can to support as many people as possible and keep up with the number of claims, we are trying to get people back into to work as quickly as we can.

“The JETS, Job Entry Targeted Support scheme also enables us to give extra support to those who have been unemployed for more than 13 weeks.”