Recommendations & Conclusions
19 items
2
Recommendation
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
The Department has ended up paying more per Restart participant than for previous similar schemes, because it had to pay providers to rapidly build up capacity from a standing start and then did not need all that capacity. From 2010–11, when it was responding to the last economic crash, to …
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The Department has ended up paying more per Restart participant than for previous similar schemes, because it had to pay providers to rapidly build up capacity from a standing start and then did not need all that capacity. From 2010–11, when it was responding to the last economic crash, to 2020–21, the Department reduced expenditure on employment support from £2.9 billion a year to £300 million a year. So, when it announced details about Restart in November 2021, designed as a £2.9 billion scheme for 1.4 million people, it inevitably had to work with the market to build capacity and could not achieve as much competition on price as it otherwise might. However, the Department had significantly overestimated demand for Restart, partly because it expected there to be more eligible participants, and partly because it expected more of those eligible participants to be found suitable to start on the scheme. Providers had quickly built capacity for the high number of participants and now had costs they could not recover for things they did not need, such as leases on larger buildings than they would require given the reduced volumes. The Department did not plan for this scenario of lower demand, and it gave limited consideration to contractual mechanisms in the original Restart contracts to reduce costs or expand eligibility without renegotiations. As a result Restart is now expected to cost £2,429 per participant, making it significantly more expensive than the Work Programme, which cost the Department around £1,760 per participant. Recommendation 2: In its Treasury Minute response to this report, the Department should set out what lessons it has learnt from Restart about how it can better expand and reduce capacity for employment support as it is needed, at 6 The Restart Scheme for long-term unemployed people better value to the taxpayer. This should include an assessment of what standing capacity and capabilities it needs and whether it can better maintain the market be
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Government response AI summary
The department agrees it is important to have a mix of provision available in order to ensure it can effectively pivot to tackle emerging issues, will further assess the standing capacity and capability of the market in line with government priorities and its commitment to …
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HM Treasury
3
Recommendation
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
The Department and providers are not working together and sharing information as effectively as they might to support participants into work. Both the Department and providers aim to provide coaching support to help participants into work. While it would have taken too long to link up the providers systems with …
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The Department and providers are not working together and sharing information as effectively as they might to support participants into work. Both the Department and providers aim to provide coaching support to help participants into work. While it would have taken too long to link up the providers systems with the Universal Credit computer system so that all this information flowed automatically, the current information sharing arrangements make it harder for the Department’s work coaches and the providers’ Restart advisors to work together to move participants into work and may leave participants questioning the value of Restart. As a result, Restart participants face a duplicative and inefficient experience, where they have to tell Department work coaches in their fortnightly meetings what they are doing on Restart, and their Restart advisor what they are doing with the Department. Participants also have to give their Restart advisor lots of information that they have already given to the Department and have similar conversations with both their work coach and Restart advisor to identify barriers to work, and produce separate lists of actions they will take to overcome these barriers and move into employment. This list of actions is called an ‘action plan’ on Restart and a ‘claimant commitment’ with the Department. Recommendation 3: • The Department should ensure work coaches and Restart provider advisors always have access to key information about participants and their barriers to work, as well as the activities that participants have agreed with either their Restart provider or the Department to help move them into work. • The Department should undertake a review into how frequently participants are required to attend jobcentres while they are on Restart, to ensure attendance requirements on participants achieve the maximum value for money.
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Government response AI summary
The department intends to test reducing the current frequency of contact for participants on the Restart scheme and review the impact of doing so.
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HM Treasury
5
Recommendation
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
The Department does not understand how well each of the individual 77 providers are delivering Restart compared to their peers. The Restart scheme is delivered by a complex network of prime contractors and their subcontractors across 12 different contract areas in England and Wales, with the aim to help participants …
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The Department does not understand how well each of the individual 77 providers are delivering Restart compared to their peers. The Restart scheme is delivered by a complex network of prime contractors and their subcontractors across 12 different contract areas in England and Wales, with the aim to help participants into work against the backdrop of the labour market in their area. Half of the prime contractors, while being responsible for their own contract area, are also subcontractors in at least one other area. The largest providers have their own systems which they use to assess participants barriers to work, as a directory of available support, and as a system to manage meetings and interactions with participants. Despite this, the regular management information the Department collects about Restart is all based on the performance in the 12 contract areas and does not cover how well individual providers are contributing to this complex network of support. The Department can collect information about how well individual providers are performing but it does not do this routinely or collate such information. As a result, it does not know how well individual providers are adhering to the customer service standards it introduced to stop providers focusing efforts on participants who are easiest to help, or how well individual providers are performing in getting people into work. Recommendation 5: While Restart is running, the Department should do more to collate and assess how individual providers are performing to increase transparency and competition between providers, and to identify pockets of best practice that might otherwise be lost when performance is compiled into a package area level. The Department should then seek to use this information as part of its evaluation.
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Government response AI summary
Prime providers will report on a simple return, the subcontractor each participant is assigned to. The department will produce relevant MI centrally and circulate subcontractor MI for each CPA to all prime providers monthly for complete transparency. Subcontractor MI will be shared with the evaluation …
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HM Treasury
6
Recommendation
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
Many claimants have complex barriers that prevent them from finding work, and some of these barriers may be better addressed through other means than an employment support scheme such as Restart. The Department’s work coaches must decide whether people from a system generated list of claimants are eligible and suitable …
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Many claimants have complex barriers that prevent them from finding work, and some of these barriers may be better addressed through other means than an employment support scheme such as Restart. The Department’s work coaches must decide whether people from a system generated list of claimants are eligible and suitable for Restart. Work coaches decided not to refer 57% of the claimants on such lists. For the majority of these people, work coaches did not refer them to Restart because they felt they were unsuitable for the programme, most often 8 The Restart Scheme for long-term unemployed people because they had ‘complex barriers’ which can include homelessness, childcare needs and physical and mental health issues. The Department has identified mental health issues as a particular barrier that many claimants must overcome to move into work. We are concerned about whether this represents ‘cost shunting’ to the Department, where failures in public services such as long waiting times for mental health appointments are effectively passed onto the Department to deal with as part of its efforts to get people into work, with neither the appropriate funding nor expertise to manage these challenges. The Department expects to publish a new White Paper on health and work early in 2023, and that part of this will include how the Department can work more closely with the Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC) and others to help people stay in work, and the Department also told us that it is working with DHSC on mental health provision. Recommendation 6: The Department should set out, in its Treasury Minute response: • Its understanding of how complex barriers such as mental health problems and homelessness, which might not traditionally sit with the Department, impact on people’s ability to find work and the associated cost of this to society and the exchequer. • How it will develop and use its knowledge of claimants to help government as a whole to take a joined up and effe
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Government response AI summary
The government set out its plan to improve support to those with complex barriers relating to health and disability in the White Paper Transforming Support: The Health and Disability White Paper published on 15 March 2023. The department also works across government to build support …
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HM Treasury
1
Conclusion
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Department of Work & Pensions (the Department) about the Restart Scheme.1
Government response AI summary
The Department for Work and Pensions (the department) released an ad hoc publication on the Restart Scheme in December 2022 and is now publishing regular six- monthly statistics, which started in June 2023 and evaluation of the Restart Scheme is underway.
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HM Treasury
7
Conclusion
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
In the remaining 43% of instances a claimant was not referred, this is because the claimant was no longer eligible by the time they were considered by the work coach. This could be, for example, because they had found work or because they no longer needed to search for work …
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In the remaining 43% of instances a claimant was not referred, this is because the claimant was no longer eligible by the time they were considered by the work coach. This could be, for example, because they had found work or because they no longer needed to search for work as part of their benefit claim.11 Discussing this, the Department told us that the mix of people coming into Universal Credit was unusual, that the labour market was very dynamic, and that people’s circumstances were “changing all the time”.12
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees and states it has implemented improvements in the Universal Credit system, as of March 2023, to record more detailed information on claimant circumstances and barriers.
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HM Treasury
8
Recommendation
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
Work coaches use their knowledge of claimants to decide what support a claimant might benefit from and whether to refer people onto particular schemes. However, the Department is not able to use this information when planning the scale of support it needs to provide because it is not always recorded …
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Work coaches use their knowledge of claimants to decide what support a claimant might benefit from and whether to refer people onto particular schemes. However, the Department is not able to use this information when planning the scale of support it needs to provide because it is not always recorded on the system, and when it is recorded this is as free-text notes on a person’s benefit claim rather than something that can be easily aggregated and used to predict demand.13 Work coaches would know, for example, if claimants had English as a second language and so might benefit from language support as part of Restart. However, while the Department told us that it had learnt from providers that around 45% of recent Restart participants in some areas had English as a second language, it could not confirm whether such information was available from its own systems.14 This presumably makes it harder for providers to plan that provision. The Department also did not run any trials to assess the number of claimants that work coaches would find suitable for Restart but said it was a “genuinely important challenge” about “whether we [the Department] could have done more to test the assumptions”.15
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Government response AI summary
The government claims to have already implemented improvements within the Universal Credit system in March 2023 to record more information on claimant's circumstances, but is unclear if aggregation would make programmes such as the Restart Scheme any more efficient.
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HM Treasury
10
Recommendation
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
Many of the complex barriers that claimants face, which can mean that somebody is less likely to be referred to Restart and that they might find it harder to move into work, are 9 Q 6; C&AG’s Report, figure 6 10 Q 7; C&AG’s Report, figure 6 11 C&AG’s Report, …
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Many of the complex barriers that claimants face, which can mean that somebody is less likely to be referred to Restart and that they might find it harder to move into work, are 9 Q 6; C&AG’s Report, figure 6 10 Q 7; C&AG’s Report, figure 6 11 C&AG’s Report, figure 6 12 Qq 2–3 13 Qq 34–36, C&AG’s Report para 2.12 14 Qq 26, 36 15 Q 4; C&AG’s Report para 2.3 16 Qq 7; 35–37 The Restart Scheme for long-term unemployed people 11 related to issues that the Department would not historically have the role of addressing. Homelessness and physical and mental health problems, for example, would all primarily be the responsibility of other government Departments (the Department for Levelling up, Housing & Communities and the Department of Health & Social Care, respectively). The Department told us that it is finding the mental health of claimants a particular barrier for people trying to get into work.17
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees that complex barriers prevent people from finding work and has set out a plan to improve support in the White Paper published on 15 March 2023, including extending the Employment Advisers in NHS Talking Therapies services, working with the Ministry of Justice, …
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HM Treasury
12
Conclusion
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
The Department also told us about some other cross government work it is involved in, including working with the Department for Levelling up, Housing & Communities to avoid benefit recipients paying higher rents for poorer-quality accommodation in the private rented sector.20 17 Q 71 18 Q 75 19 Q 73 …
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The Department also told us about some other cross government work it is involved in, including working with the Department for Levelling up, Housing & Communities to avoid benefit recipients paying higher rents for poorer-quality accommodation in the private rented sector.20 17 Q 71 18 Q 75 19 Q 73 20 Q 72 12 The Restart Scheme for long-term unemployed people 2 Participant experience on Restart and scheme performance Participant experience on Restart
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Government response AI summary
The government agreed to improve support to those with complex barriers, as set out in the White Paper published on 15 March 2023, and will work across government with other departments to build support for claimants facing other complex needs.
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HM Treasury
13
Recommendation
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
Restart participants continue to attend a jobcentre to meet their work coach every two weeks while they are on the scheme. Participants also have fortnightly meetings with their Restart provider employment advisor, half of which are in person.21 Participants have to repeat themselves in these meetings and tell their work …
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Restart participants continue to attend a jobcentre to meet their work coach every two weeks while they are on the scheme. Participants also have fortnightly meetings with their Restart provider employment advisor, half of which are in person.21 Participants have to repeat themselves in these meetings and tell their work coaches at the Department what they are doing on Restart, and their Restart advisor what they are doing with the Department. On the Work Programme, a similar previous employment support scheme, the Department ran a trial where participants were not required to meet with their work coach while they were on the scheme. The trial showed a reduction in the number of participants moving into sustained work, though this trial was conducted on a different employment support scheme and a different benefit regime, as it was before Universal Credit.22
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Government response AI summary
The government will test reducing the current frequency of jobcentre contact for Restart participants and review the impact, with a target implementation date of Spring 2024.
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HM Treasury
14
Conclusion
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
Shortly after starting on the Restart scheme, participants undertake a ‘diagnostic assessment’ with providers, to understand the extent to which things like the physical and emotional demands of work, travel, literacy, numeracy, debt, housing, criminal convictions, and family life challenges are barriers to that individual finding work. Following this, providers …
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Shortly after starting on the Restart scheme, participants undertake a ‘diagnostic assessment’ with providers, to understand the extent to which things like the physical and emotional demands of work, travel, literacy, numeracy, debt, housing, criminal convictions, and family life challenges are barriers to that individual finding work. Following this, providers will work with the participant to produce an action plan of activities they will undertake to move into employment.23 Work coaches work with claimants in a similar way, understanding their barriers and producing a claimant commitment that sets out actions that they will take to move into employment. Despite the similarities between the claimant commitment and the action plan these documents are normally developed independently, and the Department told us that providers would like more access to the claimant commitment, and more information about the barriers that work coaches know their participants face.24
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Government response AI summary
The government agreed to ensure work coaches and Restart provider advisors always have access to key information about participants and their barriers to work. Information sharing is reviewed as part of continuous improvement, including Warm Handovers, and a communications framework has been developed.
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HM Treasury
15
Conclusion
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
The Department acknowledged that while an IT system that allows information to be shared between provider employment advisors and Department work coaches would be “perfect” and is something it would think about for future programmes, it also told us that it had looked to do this previously and decided not …
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The Department acknowledged that while an IT system that allows information to be shared between provider employment advisors and Department work coaches would be “perfect” and is something it would think about for future programmes, it also told us that it had looked to do this previously and decided not to because of concerns about funding, about whether such a system might act as a barrier to innovation, and because of difficulties in ensuring such a system was kept up to date.25 The Department told us that it needs to reflect on how it can ensure the experience is not “lumpy” for participants, and that Restart does not make people “grumpy”.26 The Department also acknowledged that it can do better in setting out the information that needs to be shared between jobcentre and Restart provider and that the warm handover, which was introduced to improve engagement between the jobcentre and the provider, is “not quite where we [the Department] would like it to be”.27 21 C&AG’s Report, paras 1.9, 1.10 22 Q 13; C&AG’s Report, paras 1.10, 1.12 23 C&AG’s Report, figure 4 24 Qq 18–19, 73; C&AG’s Report, para 1.12 25 Qq 19–20 26 Q 13 27 Q 20 The Restart Scheme for long-term unemployed people 13 Monitoring the performance of Restart and evaluating its impact
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Government response AI summary
The government agreed to ensure work coaches and Restart provider advisors always have access to key information about participants and their barriers to work. Information sharing is reviewed as part of continuous improvement, including Warm Handovers, and a communications framework has been developed.
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HM Treasury
16
Conclusion
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
We have repeatedly recommended that the Department be more transparent and publish more information about the performance of its employment support schemes.28 However, until recently, the only information made available about Restart has been in response to Parliamentary Questions. While the Department did publish an ‘ad hoc’ statistical release in …
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We have repeatedly recommended that the Department be more transparent and publish more information about the performance of its employment support schemes.28 However, until recently, the only information made available about Restart has been in response to Parliamentary Questions. While the Department did publish an ‘ad hoc’ statistical release in December 2022 about how Restart is performing, and this was reasonably detailed, it did not give any indication that this was to be the first in a series of regular and scheduled performance data releases about the scheme.29 The Permanent Secretary told us that the ‘ad hoc’ statistical release was “the start” and noted the value in transparency, while pointing to remarks made by the Secretary of State to the Work and Pensions Committee on 30 November 2022, where he said that he was “more minded to be transparent than not” but also spoke about the importance of “safe spaces” for Ministers and officials to develop policy.30
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Government response AI summary
The Department for Work and Pensions will publish regular six-monthly statistics on the Restart Scheme, and has commissioned evaluations of the scheme, with decisions around publication to be made in due course.
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HM Treasury
21
Conclusion
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
The Department used the forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility to build its expectations about how much demand there would be for the Restart scheme, but acknowledges that it did not consider volumes falling as far as they did.41 The Department told us that it designs programmes to “cope …
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The Department used the forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility to build its expectations about how much demand there would be for the Restart scheme, but acknowledges that it did not consider volumes falling as far as they did.41 The Department told us that it designs programmes to “cope with volume susceptibility”, but that the reduction for Restart was “well outside of that boundary”.42
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Government response AI summary
The Department acknowledges the need to better expand and reduce capacity for employment support and to have a mix of provision available in order to effectively pivot to tackle emerging issues, and will further assess the market and value for money as part of future …
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HM Treasury
22
Conclusion
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
The Department explained to us that the reduction in volumes meant providers had prepared for a “different scale of service”, and had committed to costs such as staff and building leases that reflected the scale of the programme they had originally been asked to deliver, but now did not need.43 …
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The Department explained to us that the reduction in volumes meant providers had prepared for a “different scale of service”, and had committed to costs such as staff and building leases that reflected the scale of the programme they had originally been asked to deliver, but now did not need.43 This, coupled with a desire to maintain an uninterrupted service and a lack of flexibility in the contracts to manage such a low volume scenario, meant that the Department had little leverage in the contract renegotiations.44 In the end, 35 C&AG’s Report, para 3.2 36 Q 1 37 C&AG’s Report, para 3.4 38 Q 43 39 Qq 1–3, C&AG’s Report, para 2.8 40 Q 10; C&AG’s Report, para 13, 22 41 Q 51 42 Q 9 43 Q 61 44 Qq 55–56; C&AG’s Report, para 3.20 The Restart Scheme for long-term unemployed people 15 the Department could make only limited savings beyond those already achieved through the reduced number of ‘job outcome’ fees it would have to pay to providers, arising from the lower volumes.45
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees with the recommendation and will collate robust Management Information (MI) to assess how providers are performing at Contract Package Area (CPA) level, to increase transparency and competition and share best practice.
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HM Treasury
23
Conclusion
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
The Department set out in the Restart business case that it expected to pay around £1,800 per participant but, following the renegotiations, it now expects to pay around £2,429 per participant. The Work Programme, which ran from 2011 to 2017, cost around £1,760 per participant in 2021–22 prices.46 The Department …
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The Department set out in the Restart business case that it expected to pay around £1,800 per participant but, following the renegotiations, it now expects to pay around £2,429 per participant. The Work Programme, which ran from 2011 to 2017, cost around £1,760 per participant in 2021–22 prices.46 The Department spoke to us about the challenges it faces with contracted employment programmes such as Restart, and the requirement to suddenly build and reduce capacity dependent on how the economy is performing. The Department acknowledged that there is a question about whether to invest in long-term infrastructure for contracted employment schemes, which would make it easier to build capacity when it is needed.47 How the Department monitors performance on Restart
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees with the committee's observation and states it has been implemented. It commits to further assessing the standing capacity and capability of the employment support market as part of future Spending Review decisions and fiscal event updates.
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HM Treasury
24
Conclusion
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
Although the Department signed contracts with eight prime providers to deliver Restart across 12 contract areas in England and Wales the prime providers can, and do, subcontract much of the scheme delivery to other providers.48 In total, there are 77 providers involved in the delivery of Restart. Providers have their …
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Although the Department signed contracts with eight prime providers to deliver Restart across 12 contract areas in England and Wales the prime providers can, and do, subcontract much of the scheme delivery to other providers.48 In total, there are 77 providers involved in the delivery of Restart. Providers have their own systems which they use to assess participants barriers to work, as a directory of available support, and as a system to manage meetings and interactions with participants.49
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees with the observation and commits to implementing enhanced monitoring of subcontractor performance by Autumn 2024. This will involve prime providers reporting subcontractor assignments, central production of MI on key metrics, circulation of this MI to providers, and sharing it with the evaluation …
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HM Treasury
25
Conclusion
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
However, the Department’s routinely collected management information only shows the performance in each of the 12 contract package areas, rather than detailing the performance of individual providers. Its management information shows how many people are moving into work in contract areas and how regularly the customer service standards, which aim …
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However, the Department’s routinely collected management information only shows the performance in each of the 12 contract package areas, rather than detailing the performance of individual providers. Its management information shows how many people are moving into work in contract areas and how regularly the customer service standards, which aim to stop providers focusing on participants who are easiest to help, are met.50 While a greater proportion of Restart participants are moving into work than the Department had expected at this stage of the contract, customer service standards have not generally been met by providers.51 When we asked the Department whether it could see which subcontractors were doing the best job, it told us that it can “see some of that data”, but set out its view that it is “it is the primes’ job to drive that management” of performance in their own contract areas.52
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Government response AI summary
The department will enhance the assessment of provider performance by requiring prime providers to report on the subcontractor each participant is assigned to and will produce relevant MI centrally, starting in Autumn 2024, to be shared with prime providers and the evaluation team.
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HM Treasury
26
Conclusion
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Schem…
Accepted
Several of the Restart subcontractors work in multiple contract areas, and half of the prime contractors also work as subcontractors in areas where they are not the prime. This has helped to facilitate the sharing of best practice, but it reduces competition between contract areas.53 45 C&AG’s Report, para 22 …
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Several of the Restart subcontractors work in multiple contract areas, and half of the prime contractors also work as subcontractors in areas where they are not the prime. This has helped to facilitate the sharing of best practice, but it reduces competition between contract areas.53 45 C&AG’s Report, para 22 46 C&AG’s Report, para 23 47 Q 17 48 Q 26; C&AG’s Report, figure 8 49 C&AG’s Report, paras 4, 1.11 50 Qq 30–33; C&AG’s Report, para 3.5 51 Qq 65–66, 30–33; C&AG’s Report, para 12, 20 52 Qq 32–33 53 C&AG’s Report, para 3.5 16 The Restart Scheme for long-term unemployed people
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Government response AI summary
The government will enhance its processes by having prime providers report on subcontractor assignments, producing MI centrally, circulating subcontractor MI monthly for transparency, and sharing subcontractor MI with the evaluation team, with a target implementation date of Autumn 2024.
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HM Treasury