Unemployment in Swale has risen again, despite national figures falling.

Last month there were 3,408 unemployed people in the borough, up 123 in just a month.

It was the same picture for much of Kent, with the jobless total for the county going up by 1,964 to 37,328 – the highest it has been since May 1997.

The rise in Swale was the seventh highest of Kent’s 12 districts, with just Ashford, Dover, Sevenoaks, Thanet and Tunbridge Wells having less new people out of work.

The number of people on Jobseekers’ Allowance in Kent soared by 1,608 to 29,669.

Kent bucked the national quarterly trend which saw unemployment fall by 3,000 to 2.46m in the three months to December, defying predictions that the total would smash through the 2.5m barrier.

But that figure is still 448,000 higher than a year earlier.