The Work Programme is meant to help the unemployed find lasting jobs
More people are finding jobs through the government's flagship back-to-work scheme, according to figures from the Department for Work and Pensions.
Some 13.4% of people referred to the scheme in the year to March found a lasting job - compared with 3.4% in the same period last year.
The scheme is still failing on measures set out by the DWP at its launch.
But ministers say the latest figures "demonstrate the growing success of the scheme".
The programme is primarily aimed at getting people who have been unemployed for more than a year into a job.
It is delivered by 18 prime contractors working for the government and hundreds of smaller sub-contractors from the voluntary, community and private sectors.
Providers are paid by results, meaning they get most of the fee for finding someone a job that they stay in for up to two years. They get more for the harder-to-help jobseekers.
Dramatic improvementsSince it was launched in June 2011, 132,000 people have found lasting jobs on the scheme out of the one million referred to it, a success rate of approximately 13.4%.
Figures for the first year of the programme, which launched in June 2011, showed just 3.5% of the people referred to the programme got a lasting job.
The most dramatic improvements have been in the figures for people receiving jobseeker's allowance, with nearly a third of 18-24-year-old jobseekers finding work.
But only 5.5% of the unemployed people who have been moved to the programme from the Employment and Support Allowance, which supports sick and disabled jobseekers, found work.
Employment minister Mark Hoban said that while Thursday's figures showed a "profound" improvement, the worst-performing providers would begin to lose market share from August.
Source: BBC News - Business http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23080963#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
