Camden’s People’s Supermarket has revealed that A4e, who take government contracts to find work placements for the unemployed, has refused to pay companies providing those places despite awarding their boss an extraordinary bonus.
The Daily Mail reports that A4e boss, Emma Harrison, has personally pocketed £8.4 million after being awarded the work placement contracts by the Coalition government, despite concerns over the company’s performance.
London business The People’s Supermarket has revealed that despite “providing training and support for 17 A4e clients” over the last year A4e has refused to pay up.
The Supermarket states that “We have gone on to employ 2 of these people… We have been in lengthy talks with A4e , regarding monies owed for this service. They acknowledge that they received public money for their clients, which in accordance with their agreement with the government should be passed on to the business’s taking part in the Work Placement scheme .”
They continue that “In one meeting an A4e senior manager described their work placement contracts as “extremely lucrative”. Their continuing refusal to pay, is leading us to withdraw our support for the scheme.”
A number of MPs have been raising questions about the company. Labour’s Julie Elliott said: “David Cameron claims he believes there should be no such thing as reward for failure. But today it emerges one of his own advisers has rewarded herself dividends worth millions of pounds despite the abysmal record her company has for delivering government contracts. This case raises serious questions over the credibility of this Government when it comes to ensuring there are no rewards for failure.”
A4e state that “A4e is a social purpose company with one sole aim. To improve people’s lives around the world.” Some might conclude that their behaviour does little to back this up.
3 Comments
Not to put a damper on this story,but it seems that if you were to get your share of this scam you would be okay with it,A4e as you have found out provide very little but get the majority of the cash,surely you would not like to be compared to them and Emma Harrison.
Sleep with dogs you might get fleas…..
correction..Did not mean Big Smoke,rather the peoples supermarket
No worries MKMKY it was clear who you meant.
My understanding is they took on 17 trainees and hired two of them on a permanent basis after the scheme ended for them – that’s in a company that have about a dozen employees (someone correct me if that’s wrong).
If I was an employer I wouldn’t take people on through these schemes personally as my own experience of them is that they aren’t great for the unemployed forced to go on them. They probably aren’t that great for the company either.
However I think the key to the story is that even the lower level managers were describing this as a lucrative deal (rather than useful training or a social good) and then ripping off those who helped them.