If you run a website aimed at a local community you can now grab a stream of data showing the newest Jobcentre Plus vacancies, constrained to the offices in that area.

Updated daily, you can format this data stream to suit your website style and provide local people with a single place to keep abreast of new jobs between visits to their jobcentre.

They can of course do that from the jobseekers.direct.gov.uk, but not everyone knows that, right?

Read the full API docs and follow along with the JobsGoLocal blog or read about JobsGoLocal.

Already know what an API does, and know what to do with an xml, json, jsonp or php stream?

pick the Jobcentre Plus offices covering your area.

Otherwise read the API Introduction or jump to the spec and examples for output as: json or jsonp or xml or php or yaml

It is free, but be warned, the raw data supplied by this service is totally unofficial and is not endorsed by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) who I presume are the data owners. I make no warranties for fitness of purpose whatsoever and you should bear in mind that it can be withdrawn by the DWP at any time.

As far as I am concerned you can do what you like with this information within reason, but as a minimum I think you should at least accredit The DWP and link to them jobseekers.direct.gov.uk even if only for the sake of your website visitors. This JobsGoLocal service is not in competition with the DWP, just offering you a customised, local view of recently added view of vacancies which you can tailor for your own community. The jobseekers.direct.gov.uk contains far more jobs than this service and is packed with supporting articles and information about benefits, tips for job-seekers and those thinking of starting their own business.

You could also acknowledge and link to Martin Sullivan of Zois.co.uk who grabs the data nightly, and me Paul Geraghty of councilsites.co.uk. You should read more about this data and also take closer look at it.

We all really hope that the DWP will get around to making this job vacancy data available as re-usable open data or even linked open data (LOD) in the near future, then this service will be retired.

Should the DWP ask us to stop circulating this public information then it will be withdrawn, follow along with the JobsGoLocal blog RSS feed so you can be notified of that or any other changes.

This service is offered in the hope that it will help people find jobs, or better jobs, or even jobs closer to where they live by you putting it where local people go. I'd like to think it also enhances whatever kind of locally focused site you are running. The only thing I ask is once you have done your setup and testing that you do not hit my server for the data more than once per day unless you are testing. Simply add the argument &url=testing to your call and I will look kindly upon it for a few days.

If you cannot use it for purely technical reasons, then get in touch and I will see what I can do to help.