Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 4
6th Report - DWP Customer Service and Accounts 2023-24
Published 31 Jan 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee DWP Customer Service and Accounts 2023-24 All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Realising the benefits of service modernisation will require strong leadership to embed cultural change within DWP and its outsourced providers. DWP’s Service Modernisation Programme is an 11–year organisation-wide programme estimated to cost £312.1 million, running from 2022–23 to 2032–33, which is seeking to deliver benefits for customers, staff and taxpayers. However, the scale and complexity of the programme means delivery involves significant risk. Strong leadership is needed to make the necessary cultural changes within DWP and its outsourced providers who help to deliver services such as health assessments and telephony. DWP considers this cultural change is critical to realising the programme’s benefits, but also acknowledges that cultural change can be the biggest challenge to successfully implementing any transformation programme. DWP’s expected net return from the programme has fallen by almost £150 million over the past year, from £680 million to £531 million. By March 2024, just two years into the 11-year programme, DWP had already spent £211.5 million, two-thirds of the total estimated costs of £312.1 million. 4 recommendation DWP should set out how it will monitor and mitigate the risk that it does not achieve the cultural change necessary for successful service modernisation.
From: Public Accounts Committee, 6th Report - DWP Customer Service and Accounts 2023-24 (HC 354), 31 January 2025
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 6 May 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with most of the Committee's recommendations in this response, but disagrees with the recommendation that it set out when it expects to meet its PIP processing target.
- On PIP claim times, the government disagrees with the recommendation, stating the department "has to balance speed against the risk of inaccuracy". It says the Health Transformation Programme will modernise PIP "in the longer-term".
- On ESA calls, the government agrees and says it is recruiting 160 colleagues by March 2025. It states that customer wait times for ESA enquiries "will be improved by September 2025".
- On counter fraud, the government agrees and says that from April 2025 the department "will begin progressive deployment of an additional 3,000 staff", expecting the full number to be in role by 2027-28.
- On machine learning, the government agrees and gives a target implementation date of summer 2025. It says the department "will support an in-confidence session" on the 2024 fairness analysis assessment.