UK Inquiry Tracker

The Restart Scheme for long-term unemployed people

Public Accounts Committee Closed Inquiry

Opened: 31 Oct 2022 Closed: 27 Jun 2023 Parliament page

Restart is one of a range of measures introduced by the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) to support people to get and keep a job in the wake of the impact of COVID-19 on the UK’s labour market. Restart went live in July 2021 and operates across England and … Read more

9 Recommendations

17 Conclusions

1 Report

1 Oral session

1 Letter

1 Event

Activity timeline 4 events

27 Jun
2023

Report published

Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Forty second report from Session 2022-23

22 Mar
2023

Report published

Forty-Second Report - The Restart Scheme for long-term unemployed people

23 Jan
2023

Correspondence

Correspondence from Peter Schofield CB, Permanent Secretary, Department for Work and Pensions, re Public Accounts Committee Oral Evidence o…

12 Dec
2022

Oral evidence

The Restart Scheme for long-term unemployed people

Oral evidence sessions 1 session

12 Dec 2022

View on parliament.uk

The Restart Scheme for long-term unemployed people

Angus Gray · Department for Work & Pensions Mark Leigh · Department for Energy Security and Net Zero Peter Schofield · Department for Work and Pensions Preeta Ramachandran · Department for Work & Pensions

Reports 1 report · click to expand

Title	HC No.	Published	Items	Response
Forty-Second Report - The Restart Scheme for long-term unemploye…	HC 733	22 Mar 2023	26	Response document linked

Recommendations & Conclusions

26 results

2 Recommendation

Forty-Second Report - The Restart …

The Department has ended up paying more per Restart participant than for previous similar schemes,...

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, … Read more 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 Show less

HM Treasury

The Restart Scheme for long-term unemployed people

Activity timeline 4 events

Oral evidence sessions 1 session

Reports 1 report · click to expand

Recommendations & Conclusions

The Department has ended up paying more per Restart participant than for previous similar schemes,...

The Department and providers are not working together and sharing information as effectively as they...

The Department did not know enough about its claimants to understand what support they needed...

The Department does not understand how well each of the individual 77 providers are delivering...

Many claimants have complex barriers that prevent them from finding work, and some of these...

On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence...

In the remaining 43% of instances a claimant was not referred, this is because the...

Work coaches use their knowledge of claimants to decide what support a claimant might benefit...

We asked the Department whether it could have had any better information or better data...

Many of the complex barriers that claimants face, which can mean that somebody is less...

Discussing mental health, the Department did tell us about a number of initiatives arising from...

The Department also told us about some other cross government work it is involved in,...

Restart participants continue to attend a jobcentre to meet their work coach every two weeks...

Shortly after starting on the Restart scheme, participants undertake a ‘diagnostic assessment’ with providers, to...

The Department acknowledged that while an IT system that allows information to be shared between...

We have repeatedly recommended that the Department be more transparent and publish more information about...

The Department used its experience of delivering and evaluating the Work Programme, a similar previous...

So far more Restart participants have moved into sustained jobs than the Department had expected,...

From 2010–11, when it was responding to the last economic crash, to 2020–21, the Department...

However, shortly after launching Restart, the Department realised that had it had significantly overestimated the...

The Department used the forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility to build its expectations...

The Department explained to us that the reduction in volumes meant providers had prepared for...

The Department set out in the Restart business case that it expected to pay around...

Although the Department signed contracts with eight prime providers to deliver Restart across 12 contract...

However, the Department’s routinely collected management information only shows the performance in each of the...

Several of the Restart subcontractors work in multiple contract areas, and half of the prime...

Correspondence 1 letter