Unemployment in West Sussex soars

And a warning was given that the biggest increases in the future could be seen in the public sector, because of looming cutbacks in public spending.

Head of sustainable development Ron Crank told the strategic environmental services select committee that in the past month there had been an increase of 0.2 per cent, taking the total figure to 13,773.

But it was disturbing to see that the August to August increase was 111.8 per cent, compared with a national average of 73.1 per cent.

A lot of the unemployed were redundancies in the East Grinstead, Worthing and Horsham areas.

For the full story see this week's West Sussex Gazette.