A CASH injection of more than £800,000 has been made by the Government to help jobless Wirral people retrain to get back to work.

Wirral Council has been awarded the additional funding by The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, John Denham.

Council leader Cllr Steve Foulkes said: “This is tremendous news for Wirral.

"We have already implemented a number of important initiatives to combat the effects of the recession with our initial allocation of funding such as the highly successful Wirral Apprentice programme, ReachOut and our Business Investment grants.

"This additional funding will enable us to undertake additional activity to combat the recession and we will now assess how best to spend this most welcome extra resource.”

Funding is allocated for the period of 2008 to 2011 and allows local authorities to work with partners such as Jobcentre Plus, Primary Care Trust and social landlords to tackle the barriers some people face in getting back to work.

The council was initially awarded £28,445,187 from the fund over three years between 2008 and 2011, which has enabled the authority to implement its apprentice programme.

The council will receive this extra funding through the Working Neighbourhoods Fund which is designed to support local authorities in developing creative and innovative ways of tackling local worklessness.