THE UK Government may need to reopen shuttered job centres to accommodate the 10,000 new work coaches announced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak last week.

DWP minister Will Quince addressed the Work and Pensions Committee on the plans this morning after SNP MP Chris Stephens asked about how they will work.

The Glasgow South West MP asked: "Where are you going to accommodate the staff, given that you have closed over 100 job centres in the UK, including in the great city of Glasgow? It does suggest that there's going to be home working."

Six of the city’s 16 job centres were shut between November 2017 and February 2018.

The DWP’s head of Universal Credit, Neil Couling, replied: "Yes, I have been cross-examined by the committee in Edinburgh about the closure of job centres in Glasgow, a couple of years ago

"With the first four and a half thousand [work coaches] we can fit into our existing estates and properties.

"We've been carefully checking that's all Covid-compliant, working with our local trade unions on all of that, but after that you're quite right, we're going to need new estate, so we're currently in discussions about acquiring that to a rapid timetable."

The committee chair Stephen Timms asked if it could be possible to reopen job centres closed in recent years.

Couling said that would be a “possibility”, and added the DWP would look into how reopening the centres would work.

He said there may be redesigning required in order to make centres Covid-compliant with social distancing space provided.

Couling added the majority of centres were “quite small”, but said: "That's not completely the case in Glasgow, but in general, I think these will be newer properties."