A SMALL rise in Colchester’s unemployment has been blamed on its booming economy.

The town’s strong growth is attracting so many people to the borough to find work, that they swell Colchester’s dole queue before they actually get a job.

Yesterday, the Office for National Statistics reported a ‘claimant count’ of 1365 in Colchester for the three months to November, up 15 on October, but down 50 on a year previously.

District operations manager for Essex Jobcentre Plus, Dave Cope, said this slight increase has happened over several months.

He explained: “Colchester is the fastest growing town in Britain. If you are growing, people come to you looking for work.”

“We are still looking for employers looking to recruit and in reality a lot of employers are finding it difficult to recruit in a competitive market. The figures only tell part of the story.”

Some of the increase he put down to ‘seasonal’ factor’ too, with the November totals not accounting for temporary Christmas work, which should push the next quarterly figures down. Altogether, this meant Colchester, would remain well-below the national unemployment rate.

Colchester recorded an unemployment rate of 1.2 per cent, which compares to national unemployment rate of 4.8 per cent, which fell to an 11-year low. Tendring saw its dole queue lengthen 105 to 2,190, with its rate up 0.2 per cent to 2.9 per cent. Braintree reported 1,000 on unemployment-related benefits, with a rate of 1.1 per cent.

Mr Cope said Primark had just finished a major recruitment drive for its town centre store, with the borough jobs market now featuring “lots of employers recruiting small numbers of people.”

He continued: “The hospitality sector is extremely buoyant in Colchester. It’s a sign of people having disposable income, a sign of confidence. The organisations that look to move to Colchester, such as Byron burgers [who have announced a move to town] they do an awful lot of research before moving to Colchester. It’s not done on a whim.”

Mr Cope believed it was too early to see the impact of Brexit, but his agency has been talking to employers about that, including the possible loss of fresh labour from surviving EU countries.

He said: “Some employers would like to keep the labour supply chain open. There is always the challenge of matching the skills of available labour to the local employers’ demands.”

Colchester MP Will Quince agreed a booming Colchester was attracting people to the borough.

He tweeted national figures showing employment up to a near-record 31.8 million in work, up 2.7 million in the three months to November, and the national figure showing unemployment down 52,000 to 1.6 million.

The Conservative MP, who backed Brexit, commented: “I’m not saying there won’t be a bumpy rise post-Brexit but those who predicted doom and gloom are wrong. We can be really optimistic about the future of the country.”

While Theresa May had this week given certainty over the Single Market, he added the visa or working arrangements for future EU migrants were “all up in the air.”