COMMUNITIES secretary Eric Pickles has welcomed news that more than a quarter of the Government’s target 120,000 troubled families are already on the way to being turned around.

The Secretary of State for Local Government said the figures showed that councils are on course to meet the Prime Minister’s target of having children back in school, cutting youth crime and anti-social behaviour and putting parents on a path back to work by 2015.

Figures from local authorities released by the Department for Communities and Local Government show that by the end of the first year of the three-year payment-by-results programme in March more than 35,000 troubled families were being worked with, up from 22,000 in December 2012.

The figures also showed that councils had identified more than 66,000 of the 120,000 families the Prime Minister pledged to turn around by 2015.

In Swindon, 306 families were identified and 104 had been worked with. In Wiltshire, a total of 277 families had been idenitfied and all 277 had been worked with.

Mr Pickles said: “The Troubled Families programme is on track to deliver life-changing results for families and communities across the country. Many services have been set up from scratch over the past year so it is remarkable progress to already be reaching a quarter of the families who need help to change.

“Troubled families are often living miserable lives and can also cause misery to the communities around them, draining around £9bn per year from the public purse. This programme is not only transforming the lives of families we have too often not got to grips with in the past, but it will deliver considerable savings to the taxpayer by reducing their demand on services and helping them make a positive contribution to society.”