Recommendation 26

We asked the Department whether it had conducted an impact assessment of the removal of face-to-face support from the Help to Claim service. The Department said that it had looked at how people received support and found that the vast majority got support through their family and friends, or from the Department’s jobcentres or telephone helplines. It highlighted that its testing had found that Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants liked to use their existing relationships with jobcentres and argued that this was an effective way of supporting people face to face. The Department told us that around 3% of customers received support from Citizens Advice or other agencies.57