Recommendation 1

Claimant commitments should be a cornerstone of the relationship between claimants and work coaches. But too often, commitments set work search requirements that are too generic and sometimes counter-productive (such as completing a set number of applications or spending 35-hours job searching per week). We heard that complying with these blanket conditions can be stressful and can leave people feeling disempowered and unsupported. We welcome the Government’s undertaking to review the claimant commitment, including trialling changes to the commitment. However, we would have liked to have heard from DWP about more substantial plans to reform this crucial part of the benefits process to make it a meaningful part of people’s journey to work. We are concerned that the only change DWP told us about was splitting the claimant commitment meeting into two meetings, which does not fill us with confidence about DWP’s ambitions. (Conclusion, Paragraph 22)