Why DWP should publish better data on employment support schemes

Briefing: How DWP can and should publish performance data on employment support

January 2023

1. Summary

The Department for Work and Pensions can collect and publish better performance data on its employment support schemes. This would be inexpensive and provide better information on value for money.
DWP spends £2.5bn a year on employment support schemes - but does not publish (or sometimes even monitor) performance data about how well suppliers help jobseekers find work. Even MPs and Select Committees struggle to obtain this information.
We recommend DWP start reporting detailed performance data on the current Restart and Flexible Support Fund programmes, and commit to publishing detailed, timely performance data on future schemes.

2. Background

DWP runs various employment support schemes designed to help jobseekers find work. It spends £2.5bn annually on these schemes, which include contracts to third-party suppliers to support jobseekers to obtain new skills, and funding for employers to create new jobs.

Employment support schemes have a clear success metric - getting those jobseekers who would not have otherwise found work into work.

Yet MPs, civil society and the public have struggled to obtain data from DWP about how well its schemes do this, who they support, or the problems they face.

3. The problem: poor data on past performance

In 2020, the Government announced its Plan for Jobs, aimed at helping people back into work following the Covid-19 pandemic.

This included schemes to support jobseekers, but little performance data has been made available about the performance of these schemes, despite requests from stakeholders.

Kickstart

Kickstart was a £1.9bn scheme that aimed to help 250,000 young people by paying employers to create six-month jobs with support to improve employability. The scheme was criticised early for a lack of performance data.

In 2021, the National Audit Office (NAO) warned that DWP did not monitor if it was targeting Kickstart at the right groups, or whether placements were offering adequate support. The NAO recommended the DWP begin publishing “regular, timely statistics” on Kickstart’s progress. However, DWP did not publish any such statistics.

In 2022, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warned Kickstart was struggling and DWP had little idea why. The PAC also recommended DWP should begin publishing data on Kickstart, and better performance data across all its employment support schemes. However DWP rejected the Committee’s recommendations to publish Kickstart data.

While Kickstart aimed to help 250,000 young people into work, it was reported that as of April 2022 only 162,000 people had taken up jobs, and DWP returned £1bn of unspent Kickstart funding to the Treasury. The opportunity to spot problems with the scheme and tackle them was missed.

JETS and JFS

The plan also included the Job Entry Targeted Support (JETS) programme and the Job Finding Support (JFS) scheme.

As far as we are aware, no detailed performance data has been published about either scheme. DWP’s provider guidance for JFS says “Performance league tables will be published and contracts will include transparency clauses to ensure relative as well as individual contract performance assessment”, yet these tables appear to be unpublished.

4. The opportunity: improve data on future schemes

1. Restart - a £1.7bn scheme already underperforming?

Restart is a £1.7bn scheme running from 2021-25 that aims to help over 1 million long-term unemployed people into work. It contracts third-party providers to offer jobseekers 12 months of support and training.

As with Kickstart, DWP does not publish routine statistics on Restart’s performance. However, Restart also appears to be struggling. DWP told Parliament in May 2022 that just 7% of Restart entrants had yet found work. More recently, it was reported that DWP expects 36% of entrants to find work - though this is based on internal estimates with no per-supplier breakdowns.

The majority of planned Restart funding has yet to be paid, so there is now an opportunity to understand which groups are struggling to find work, what type of support is most successful, and whether individual suppliers are underperforming.

Restart suppliers are required to report detailed performance data to DWP, including customer satisfaction levels and job outcomes. DWP should therefore be able to supply more detailed data than it has so far made available.

2. The Flexible Support Fund - no central performance monitoring

The Flexible Support Fund (FSF) provides funding for local Jobcentres to commission tailored support to jobseekers by purchasing training. In 2020/21, Jobcentres spent £24.4m on training, and the Government announced an extra £150m for the FSF in 2020.

FSF suppliers must report performance data and their payment is often based on ‘job outcomes’ i.e. finding work in a defined period. However, per-supplier performance data is not published or even collated centrally by DWP - so there is no national evaluation of performance by supplier.

Remarkably, under DWP procurement guidelines, local Jobcentres do not use past performance data to evaluate suppliers’ bids.

Since performance data is already reported to Jobcentres, it should be straightforward for DWP to collate this data nationally, and allow past performance to inform future selection, providing better value for money overall for the taxpayer.

5. Recommendations

We recommend DWP start publishing performance data at overall scheme and supplier level, as follows:

DWP should immediately begin publishing more detailed performance data on Restart suppliers in order to identify and tackle potential underperformance in the scheme, for example:
1. Taking steps to address its lack of data on ethnicity, disability and education level
2. Publishing more disaggregated data by region (i.e. supplier)
3. Publishing overall data on customer satisfaction and complaint levels, and anonymised per-supplier data
4. Publishing an interim analysis of how scheme exits can be improved.
DWP should start monitoring and reporting on the performance of the FSF at a national and local level, including:
1. Collating performance data nationally
2. Taking expert advice on whether past performance data can be used by Jobcentres to inform procurement.
As per the NAO’s recommendation, in future schemes, DWP should commit to setting out in both the Outline and Final Business Case the management data required to manage the programme and the scope and schedule of the routine statistics that will be published about the programme.

This should be straightforward to implement, and would support better design of future schemes and ensure the best use of taxpayers’ money.

6. About us

The Centre for Public Data is a new non-partisan organisation with a mission to strengthen the UK’s public data. We aim to reduce gaps in data that harm civil society and business. We support legislators and policymakers to improve data coverage and quality, via practical interventions in legislation, codes of practice and governance.

We would be pleased to discuss any of these issues further: contact@centreforpublicdata.org.