A shortage of work coaches at the Department for Work and Pensions has led to reduced support for unemployed people and risks the prospect of higher benefits bills and more undetected fraud, the National Audit Office has said.
According to the public-spending watchdog, DWP had around 2,300 fewer work coaches than the department estimated it needed in 2022-23 – a 13.2% shortfall on its target of around 17,400 to meet total demand.
The NAO said that while the work-coach shortfall dipped to 1,400 in 2023-24, it increased to an average of 2,100 in the first six months of 2024-25. The watchdog’s report says DWP secured funding for fewer work coaches than it needed to meet demand.
For the first six months of 2024-25, the department assessed it would need an average of 18,900 work coaches but only had funding for between 17,600 and 18,000 coaches.
One result of the shortage of work coaches is that DWP has prioritised supporting Universal Credit claimants in the “intensive work-search” category and postponed plans to require “light-touch” claimants to meet regularly with a work coach.
Other flexibilities introduced by DWP include allowing jobcentres to shorten the first meeting with claimants from 50 to 30 minutes.
Over the past two years, the proportion of intensive work-search claimants who move into work each month has declined to below pre-pandemic levels. In 2018-19, the monthly into-work rate for Universal Credit claimants in the intensive work-search category was 8.8%. In 2021-22, the rate reached 9.7% but it declined in the following two years, hitting 8.2% in 2023-24.
The fall in the into-work rate is unlikely to be due exclusively to the shortage of work coaches. Weak economic conditions and changes to the volume of Universal Credit claimants will also have had an impact.
However, the NAO’s report comes just days after work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall set out controversial plans to encourage more people on health-related working-age benefits to return to the labour market. The move is likely to increase pressure on services, as it will see 1,000 work coaches redeployed to provide “intensive support” to around 65,000 sick and disabled people during the current financial year, although Kendall also announced a £1bn-a-year investment in tailored support as part of the reforms.
The NAO suggested that the shortage of work coaches must also be a consideration to be factored into the government’s plans for reforming employment support by bringing together job centres with the National Careers Service in England.
A further NAO caveat is that fewer job-coach meetings with light-touch Universal Credit claimants will cost taxpayers more money by extending the duration of claims and making it harder to catch fraud and error. In 2023-24, fraud and error overpayments in Universal Credit are estimated to have cost DWP more than £6.4bn.
The NAO report says: “There is a risk that less frequent interactions with claimants may lead to higher expenditure as claimants will spend more time on benefits, or increased fraud and error because work coaches will have fewer opportunities to check, for example, whether claimants’ circumstances have changed.”
NAO head Gareth Davies said helping people move into work and progress in jobs once they have found them is “crucial” to boosting productivity and reducing economic inactivity.
“As it takes forward the government’s plans for reforming employment support, DWP should pay close attention to how it can make best use of its work coaches and ensure that people get the support they need,” he said.
“Given the key role jobcentres will play in supporting the government’s ambition to increase the employment rate, DWP should also be transparent about how effective they are and evaluate the impact of its changes on the system of employment support.”
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, said the NAO’s work has shown that more than half of Great Britain’s 600-plus jobcentres have scaled back their services because of work-coach shortages.
“Future reforms to employment support will be frustrated without clear evidence on what works in supporting benefit claimants into employment," he said.
“DWP must strengthen its monitoring of the performance of job centres, ensuring every pound spent delivers positive outcomes for individuals and the wider economy.”
Among its recommendations, the NAO said the department must set out how it will manage the risk of not being able to meet future demand with its reformed employment-services offer.
It also asked DWP to strengthen accountability for jobcentres “with the aim of maximising their contribution to the government’s overall ambition of an 80% employment rate”.
The NAO said this should be done by setting out the management information the department will use to monitor jobcentres’ performance and by using the results of monitoring to “identify and share good practice” from locations that are performing strongly.
A DWP spokesperson said: “Our jobcentres are full of brilliant work coaches – but they are held back by a system that is too focused on ticking boxes and monitoring benefits instead of genuinely supporting people back into work.
“That is why we are redeploying 1,000 work coaches to help deliver intensive employment support to sick and disabled people, modernising jobcentres with new digital tools, and improving access to free up work coaches’ time as we bring the network together with the National Careers Service
“This will come alongside our Get Britain Working white paper which will bring forward the biggest employment reforms in a generation – joining up local, work, health and skills support and guaranteeing every young person has the chance to earn or learn as we deliver on our Plan for Change.”