Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 3
60th Report - DWP follow-up: Autumn 2025
Published 9 Jan 2026
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee DWP follow-up: Autumn 2025 All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Greater transparency about jobcentre performance is needed to enable effective local scrutiny. In our July 2025 report on Jobcentres, we recommended that the Department should set out how it will increase transparency around jobcentres, for example by regularly publishing jobcentre-level data, including data on work coach numbers against need and into-work rates. On the day of our evidence session in October 2025, the Department published the first in a new series of quarterly labour market insights. This publication provides into-work data at jobcentre district and local authority level but not for individual jobcentres, and provides no information on work coach numbers. In seeking to justify its approach, the Department says that data at jobcentre level are less robust and subject to more volatility, and that it is concerned that publishing data at this level could lead to it having to explain the particular circumstances of each jobcentre, which would require a lot of resources. We are disappointed by this response and, while we welcome the new publication, without greater transparency, effective local scrutiny of jobcentre performance will not be possible. recommendation The Department should be more transparent by implementing our previous recommendation to publish regularly jobcentre-level data, including data on work coach numbers against need and into-work rates. This data could be included in the new quarterly labour market insights publication. 4
From: Public Accounts Committee, 60th Report - DWP follow-up: Autumn 2025 (HC 1447), 9 January 2026
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 1 April 2026 (deadline 9 March 2026).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with four of the Committee's five areas of recommendation and disagrees with the recommendation to publish regular jobcentre-level performance data.
- On integrating skills into the Jobs and Careers Service, the government agrees, naming "a key milestone" as bringing the National Careers Service together with Jobcentre Plus from 1 October 2026, with an update due in Spring 2026.
- On the shorter first work coach meeting, the government agrees and says it "will be undertaking a qualitative research project" to gather claimant insight, including feedback on the length and content of the meeting.
- The government disagrees with publishing jobcentre-level data, saying its view "remains that the right level to monitor performance is at a district and local authority level", and points to its quarterly Labour Market Insights publication.
- On PIP claim times, the government agrees and says it "will however write to the Committee to provide the information available as requested, by the end of March 2026".