New deal, new interiors

For those working in service or retail industries, it is second nature to aim to impress. From the moment customers enter your premises to the moment they leave, their passage should be as smooth and pleasant as possible.

Traditionally, that sentiment would rarely have been expressed in the less salubrious surroundings of a Job Centre. It will be soon, though. In January the Employment Service is to publish a 140-page document, aimed at all staff, explaining how effective design practices can be used to make Job Centres more welcoming and professional.

BDP Design, the Employment Service’s retained consultancy for interior design and space planning issues, has spent the last three years researching and writing the book, which is being brought into print in collaboration with communications group Redhouse Lane.

It explores all elements of design relating to the role of Job Centres, including corporate identity, space planning, disabled access and health and safety considerations. Redhouse Lane has developed the publication into something intended to be relevant to all staff; a separate volume containing greater details for design professionals will be issued as a stand-alone book.

The mainstream book will be launched, along with a video presentation pack, after some pre-publication leaflets have alerted staff to its existence.

“We’ve tried to make it as interesting as possible,” says a Redhouse Lane spokeswoman. The book, still being printed, will include a wide selection of illustrations, including photographs of effective and ineffective Job Centre interiors, and diagrams to show basic space-planning theories.

Key to the changing attitude to design at the Employment Service is New Deal, the existing Government initiative to improve the chances of long-term job seekers to find work. It has led to a number of changes in the way clients – called claimants in the old days – are treated.

According to Employment Service estates manager Robert Coe, “There has been some concern on the impact of Government buildings. They have been designed and built to cost for too long.” New-build projects will now be handled differently, he says, while the BDP/Redhouse Lane book will aim to make a difference via interior design at the “front line” of existing offices.

“What we are really talking about is service to the client,” says Coe. “In the past, the offices were bureaucratic and functional… since the introduction of New Deal the old style is not appropriate to our way of working.”

A new identity and interiors which were trialled two years ago at the Job Centre on London’s Brixton Hill are seen as a template for changes to extend to the rest of the UK’s 1050 Job Centres. Enterprise IG, then known as Sampson Tyrrell Enterprise, carried out the project (DW 5 December 1997).

“We haven’t rolled out 1000 Brixton Hills because of cost issues,” says Coe, conceding that there are tight controls on expenditure. Heavy spending on designer Job Centres would be difficult to justify politically even if the cash were available.

Indeed, there have been few Job Centres which have benefited from a complete, rather than partial, refurbishment. But a number of smaller and more easily adaptable elements from the Brixton Hill pilot site are being implemented elsewhere, in a bid to improve perceptions of the Employment Service.

One of the first things clients see when they walk in to many Job Centres is now a bright yellow wall, for example, rather than the dingy white which may have been the norm in the past. The Sampson Tyrrell identity programme is gradually being rolled out.

Space is also used more effectively. Using the Space Analysis Spreadsheet System developed for them by BDP, the Employment Service’s in-house design and planning staff can make more effective use of available space. For example, the system takes into account the varied uses working spaces will be put to at different times of the day.

As the Government attempts to remedy the growing division between the richest and poorest in society, the Employment Service and The Benefits Agency could find themselves more in the public eye. This could mean that perceptions of them could become increasingly important to a new audience – which might otherwise never see inside a Job Centre. That audience might well be concerned to see that the money it has paid, in tax, is being well used. A professional image would now seem to be a necessity, rather than a luxury.

Job centre initiatives

1989: The then Lloyd Northover creates new branding for Job Centres

1997: December – The then Sampson Tyrrell Enterprise pilots the first in a redesign for Job Centres in Brixton Hill, London.

1998: January – The Government’s Creative Industries task force, set up in October 1997, calls on the design industry to help it analyse the design sector and its own employment levels.

1999: July – Wagstaffs Design brands The Seacroft Partnership, a local community project in Leeds backed by the Leeds District Employment Service.

1999: November – Education and Employment Minister Baroness Blackstone launches a campaign to halve the number of people with literacy and numeracy problems