Value for Money
The Restart scheme for long‑term unemployed people
Published 2 December 2022
9 recommendations
Department for Work and Pensions
COVID-19EmploymentWork, welfare and pensions
nao.org.uk
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) set up the Restart scheme to help people made unemployed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This report considers the performance of the scheme so far.
Recommendations (9)
Source: NAO Recommendations Tracker
Department for Work and Pensions
Rec 1
Accepted
Work in Progress
DWP is likely to use an employment support scheme such as Restart again in the event of another economic shock. It should learn from the experience of Restart to ensure it is better prepared and able to scale up and down capacity as required. We recommend that DWP:
a) improve its scenario-planning for contracts. It should consider now whether current economic forecasts suggest that demand for Restart will increase and whether it needs to adapt the programme and engage providers. It should improve its scenario-planning for future contracts to cover all reasonable scenarios that would affect the way the contracts work;
Department for Work and Pensions
Rec 2
Accepted
Work in Progress
b) improve participants? customer journey between the job centre and provider for future contracted-out employment support programmes. This will require a better flow of information between jobcentres and providers so that they can coordinate their efforts to support the participant and the participants do not need to repeat information. It would likely include information on barriers to work and actions being taken to address them;
Department for Work and Pensions
Rec 3
Accepted
Work in Progress
g) reduce the cost of scaling up and scaling down employment support. It should consider whether to maintain contracted-out employment support between economic shocks to maintain a market and to enable providers to more easily scale up capacity when it is needed. It should also consider which parts of its own systems should be ?mothballed? so that it can easily deploy them when needed in the event of a future economic shock;
Department for Work and Pensions
Rec 4
Accepted
Implemented
c) gather and use provider information to evaluate Restart and inform future provision. This should include information from the providers on participants? barriers to work and how these have changed while on the programme, so that DWP can identify specific areas of need and inform its understanding of how Restart has addressed specific barriers to work;
Department for Work and Pensions
Rec 5
Accepted
Work in Progress
d) Improve its understanding of which claimants are suitable for employment support. It should use the data it has collected on people who were not referred to Restart to help inform expectations about the number of claimants who would benefit from future schemes. It should also consider how it will forecast and monitor suitability in future schemes, including whether more indicators of suitability can be recorded on the Universal Credit system;
Department for Work and Pensions
Rec 6
Accepted
Implemented
e) consider reducing the level of contact participants have with jobcentres. It should update its assessment of the cost-effectiveness of participants continuing to attend both the provider and the jobcentre fortnightly, taking into account the impact on the participant?s incentives to search for work and the cost of work coaches? time, so that it can decide if there are efficiency savings to be had or whether this would be a false economy;
Department for Work and Pensions
Rec 7
Partially Accepted
Implemented
f) continuously improve its use of Payment by Results using its open book accounting provisions. It should review the incentives in its payment by result contracts and seek to refine these for future programmes, to reduce the extent to which contractors? profit depends on things outside their control;
Department for Work and Pensions
Rec 8
Partially Accepted
Implemented
i) improve transparency of its employment support programmes. For example, DWP should publish quarterly statistics on Restart participation and job outcomes. It has previously done this for other employment support programmes and it aids public confidence and stakeholder understanding,
Department for Work and Pensions
Rec 9
Partially Accepted
Work in Progress
h) improve the information it uses to assess customer service standards for future contracts. DWP needs to be able to assess performance in a timely way so that it can act quickly if necessary. This is likely to require some standardisation of providers? information systems so that they can automatically provide key performance indicator (KPI) data; and