Corporate report

Department for Work and Pensions Outcome Delivery Plan: 2021 to 2022

Published 15 July 2021

This was published under the 2019 to 2022 Johnson Conservative government

© Crown copyright 2021

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Our outcome delivery plan sets out our priority outcomes and describes how we plan to deliver them.

Outcome Delivery Plan

Secretary of State’s and Permanent Secretary’s Foreword

We are proud of how the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has supported millions of people through the pandemic, helping deliver an unprecedented welfare support package competently and compassionately during a traumatic and testing year for the country. It is why we see DWP as the ‘Department for Wonderful People’. Just as DWP was on the front line of our emergency economic response, so too are we in leading our national recovery through the Plan for Jobs and more.

Our overriding mission is quite simple: to improve people’s quality of life and the things that really matter to people, today, every day – to make someone’s tomorrow better than their yesterday. This plan sets out how DWP will do that through the delivery of a wide range of services. For example, by supporting people into work, helping disabled people live independent lives, improving housing and tackling homelessness, providing the financial foundation for a secure old age through the State Pension, and ensuring children of separated parents have more opportunity to fulfil their potential through a better child maintenance system.

The last twelve months have been extraordinary and the next twelve months ahead provide an even greater challenge. Clearly, getting people back into decent jobs where they can progress, climb the career ladder and increase their incomes, while effectively supporting those who cannot work, is a focus for this year. We want to permanently super-power people’s pockets and potential, providing the lift they need to lead more independent, financially resilient lives.

We seek to be an exemplar of the modern Civil Service, and to build on the achievements of last year for the benefit of those we serve. When we are at our best, we care, we deliver, we adapt, we work together and we value everyone, and we seek to ensure that these values guide the way we serve our country, our communities and our fellow citizens in the year ahead.

The Rt. Hon Thérèse Coffey MP,
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

Peter Schofield CB
Permanent Secretary

A. Executive Summary

Vision and mission

DWP’s mission is to improve people’s quality of life, both now and in the future. We do that by focussing on delivering excellent services that make a difference to millions of people’s everyday lives, thinking of our citizens we serve directly and taxpayers. We trust and empower our people to deliver these services to customers every day, including the most vulnerable in society.

Our Outcome Delivery Plan sets out our priority outcomes for the next year and beyond. To deliver our priority outcomes – and reinforce the ambitions of the Declaration on Government Reform – we will focus on 4 key enablers:

  • Workforce, Skills and Location
  • Innovation, Technology and Data
  • Delivery, Evaluation and Collaboration
  • Sustainability

DWP is focussed on helping the country build back better. We will deliver the Plan for Jobs as part of the National Economic Recovery, maximising employment and in-work progression. We will work alongside other departments to prepare people to take advantage of new jobs created in existing and growth sectors. With a strong focus on young people, Kickstart is our lead programme for Plan for Jobs with other programmes to help people of all ages get the skills and experience they need to move into sustainable, quality work. Maximising people in work and their progression in the workforce will, alongside our other work on increasing financial resilience and tackling the cost of living, will help us reduce poverty.

Helped by the new National Disability Strategy and the Health and Disability Support Green Paper, we will seek to improve the lives and experiences of citizens impacted by disability and long-term health conditions in both how they use our services and levelling up in access to opportunities.

We will make further progress on important transformational programmes including the Universal Credit (UC) and Health Transformation, as well as further automation to improve our effectiveness and efficiency in the delivery of retirement services and family support, including Child Maintenance. We will also strive to tackle fraud and error, recognising that stopping every pound stolen from the taxpayer means more funds could be used to support the people’s priorities.

DWP’s public bodies are critical partners in delivering government priorities, this includes supporting financial security in retirement, financial resilience and making Great Britain a healthier and safer place to live and work.

We are also playing a key role internationally as DWP leads UK engagement on a wide range of social, employment and skills policies across a number of international forums. Through green jobs and the world-leading regulation of our pension schemes, we will contribute to an active and ambitious COP26 agenda on the path to achieving net zero.

Through all of this and more we are helping to rebuild, revitalise, regenerate our economy, level up across the country and build a brighter future for Britain.

Our priority outcomes

This outcome delivery plan sets out in detail how we will deliver our priority outcomes, how we will measure our success, and how we will ensure we continuously improve. DWP has 4 priority outcomes, which we used as the framework for the 2020 Spending Review. These are:

  1. Maximise employment across the country to aid economic recovery following COVID-19.

  2. Improve opportunities for all through work, including groups that are currently under-represented in the workforce.

  3. Address poverty through enabling progression in the workforce and increasing financial resilience.

  4. Deliver a reliable, high-quality welfare and pensions system which customers have confidence in.

The Department is also supporting the delivery of the following priority outcomes led by other departments:

Priority outcome Lead Department
Reduce crime Home Office (HO)
Drive economic growth through improving the skills pipeline, levelling up productivity and supporting people to work Department for Education (DfE)
End rough sleeping through more effective prevention and crisis intervention services, and reduce homelessness by enabling local authorities to fully meet their statutory duties Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)
Support the most disadvantaged and vulnerable children and young people through high quality local services so that no one is left behind DfE
Provide the best start in life through high-quality early education and childcare to raise standards and help parents to work DfE
Deliver swift access to justice Ministry of Justice (MoJ)
Raise productivity and empower places so that everyone across the country can benefit from levelling up MHCLG

Enablers

To deliver our priority outcomes, we will use the 4 key enablers:

  1. Workforce, Skills and Location
  2. Innovation, Technology and Data
  3. Delivery, Evaluation and Collaboration
  4. Sustainability.

B. Introduction

1. Context

From the design and development of policies to the delivery of services supporting work, welfare, pensions and child maintenance, DWP is the government’s largest department. Each and every colleague, whatever their role, grade or location, has a crucial role helping deliver on our objectives and vision.

To deliver our vision we have 3 core objectives. Each of our core objectives has 4 sub-objectives:

1) Maximising employment and in-work progression

1.1 Supporting economic recovery as we move past the immediate response to the pandemic and ensuring the UK’s long-term prosperity by delivering the Plan for Jobs.

1.2 Supporting the recruitment of disabled people into work, their retention, and reducing the disability employment gap.

1.3 Ensuring that it pays to work, and supporting in-work progression.

1.4 Supporting disadvantaged and protected groups and those with wider barriers to work to reach their potential in the labour market.

2) Improving people’s quality of life

2.1 Promoting financial resilience and reducing poverty, including by harnessing the full set of levers available through the Department and our public bodies.

2.2 Support people to help meet the basic cost of living and work across government to support the development of the wider housing system, particularly with Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG).

2.3 Transforming our support for disabled people and people with health conditions to promote independent living and improve the customer experience.

2.4 Ensuring financial security for all.

3) Delivering excellent services for citizens and taxpayers

3.1 Continuing to reduce and prevent fraud and error in benefit expenditure to deliver value for money for the taxpayer.

3.2 Becoming a data driven organisation with modern, secure, sustainable, and automated systems to drive better experiences for our customers, staff and tax payers.

3.3 Understanding our customers’ experience so we can target our interventions when and where they have the most impact.

3.4 Working smartly and flexibly to deliver services when, where and how our customers need us.

To deliver on these objectives we will focus on four priority outcomes this year. This plan sets out the activities we will deliver in 2021 to 2022 against these outcomes.

Core Objective Priority Outcome
Maximising employment and in-work progression Maximise employment across the country to aid economic recovery following COVID-19
Improve opportunities for all through work, including groups that are currently under-represented in the workforce
Improving people’s quality of life Address poverty through enabling progression in the workforce and increasing financial resilience
Delivering excellent services for citizens and taxpayers Deliver a reliable, high-quality welfare and pensions system which customers have confidence in

2. Governance and delivery agencies

Governance

The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the Rt. Hon Thérèse Coffey MP has overall responsibility for the Department and its Arm’s length bodies. She is supported in this by her Ministerial Team of:

The Permanent Secretary has responsibility, both to the Secretary of State and directly to Parliament, as the Accounting Officer for the Department’s expenditure and management. DWP’s senior governance structure and membership, including that of the Departmental Board and Executive Team are published in the DWP Annual Report and Accounts available at www.gov.uk.

Delivery Agencies

Eleven Arm’s Length Bodies and Non-Departmental Bodies are affiliated with DWP, details of which can be found on their dedicated websites.

3. Overview of strategic risk

The Department has a strong Risk Management Strategy that supports the identification, assessment and mitigation of risks that threaten the delivery of DWP’s services. The pandemic has forced the Department to respond at pace and many of the Department’s risks remain fluid. As we enter 2021 to 2022 our Principal Risk themes reflect the ongoing challenges the pandemic has placed on our people and our services:

  • Delivering a full, sustainable service, having the capacity and resilience to deliver plans including transformation and change activity, and ensuring the safety of our people and customers

  • Fraud, error and debt

  • Economic uncertainty, the impact on the labour market and our ability to respond to increasing levels of claims to benefit

These risks are monitored on a regular basis by the Executive Team and Risk Assurance Board who continue to provide robust risk assurance.

4. Our resources

a. Our finances

i. Departmental Expenditure Limit (DEL): £9.7 billion

ii. Resource DEL (including depreciation): £9.2 billion

iii. Capital DEL: £0.5 billion

iv. Annually Managed Expenditure (AME): £228.8 billion

Control totals included in this document are in line with those presented in the Main Supply Estimates 2021 to 2022 and are currently subject to Parliamentary approval. Any changes arising from the Parliamentary approval process will be reflected in due course.

Source: Main Supply Estimates 2021 to 2022

5. Our people

As at 31 December 2020, DWP had 75,590 full-time equivalent employees.

Source: ONS public sector employment data / Release schedule: quarterly.

Breakdown of resource by work

In this environment, the importance of our work has never been greater. We need to have the resources to do our work effectively and efficiently, and to respond to new priorities as they arise. The figure below shows how our resources are allocated to our different priority outcomes:

Priority outcome Budget (£) Workforce Full time Employees (FTE)
Priority outcome 1: Maximise employment across the country to aid economic recovery following COVID-19.

Priority outcome 2: Improve opportunities for all through work, including groups that are currently under-represented in the workforce.		 Total Departmental Expenditure Limit: £4.9bn* 57,100*
Priority outcome 3: Address poverty through enabling progression in the workforce and increasing financial resilience. Total Departmental Expenditure Limit: £1.7bn 11,150
Priority outcome 4: Deliver a reliable, high-quality welfare and pensions system which customers have confidence in. Total Departmental Expenditure Limit: £3.1bn 22,650

FTE Figures are the supply forecast position at end of Q1 rounded to nearest 50.

*The activities that support Outcomes 1 and 2 do not allow for a clean apportionment of DEL and FTE

C. Priority Outcomes Delivery Plans

Priority Outcome 1

Maximise employment across the country to aid economic recovery following COVID-19.

Lead minister[s]

The Rt Hon Thérèse Coffey MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Mims Davies MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Employment

Senior Sponsor

Jonathan Mills, Director General, Labour Market Policy and Implementation

Outcome Strategy

Supporting people into work and maximising employment is critical to government’s ambition to build back better following the pandemic. To do this we will deliver our Plan for Jobs – Kickstart, standing up JETS (Job Entry Targeted Support), launching the Restart Programme for the long term unemployed and expanding the Sector Based Work Academy programme. We are continuing to make good progress on our Plan for Jobs and have met our recruitment pledge of delivering an additional 13,500 work coaches to boost Britain’s job army.

This will ensure we can deliver the full range of Universal Credit (UC) services helping even more customers find new jobs. We are recommencing Move to UC to ensure that all our customers can benefit from its services. Supported by delivery partners, we will initiate a voluntary phase in 2021, helping many to access the targeted support UC provides – enabling claimants to find new jobs and build their financial resilience.

Departments supporting the outcome delivery:

  • Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS)

  • Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG)

  • The Department for Education (DfE)

  • HM Treasury (HMT)

Our performance metrics

UK Employment rate of 16 to 64 year olds – National

Quarter Employment rate of 16 to 64 year olds
Jan to Mar 2021 75.2%
Jan to Mar 2020 76.3%
Jan to Mar 2019 76.1%
Jan to Mar 2018 75.6%

Source: ONS labour market statistics

Release schedule: monthly (quarterly comparisons recommended)

GB Employment rate of 16 to 64 year olds – Regional

Region 2018 2019 2020
North East 73.5% 71.1% 72.7%
North West 73.7% 74.8% 75.8%
Yorkshire and The Humber 74% 74.4% 73.7%
East Midlands 75.6% 76.5% 77.9%
West Midlands 73.8% 73.9% 74.7%
East of England 78.3% 79.4% 77.8%
London 75.1% 75% 76.6%
South East 78.5% 79.1% 79.9%
South West 79.3% 79.6% 78.7%
Wales 73.6% 75.4% 74%
Scotland 74.8% 75.4% 74.5%

Source: ONS labour market statistics

Release schedule: monthly (quarterly comparisons recommended).

UK Employment rate of 16 to 24 year olds – National

Quarter Employment rate of 16 to 24 year olds
Jan to Mar 2021 50.9%
Jan to Mar 2020 55.1%
Jan to Mar 2019 55.4%
Jan to Mar 2018 54.8%

Source: ONS labour market statistics

UK Employment rate of 16 to 24 year olds – Regional

To be published in the 2020 to 2021 DWP Annual Report and Accounts.

Number of participants in Kickstart

To be published in the 2020 to 2021 DWP Annual Report and Accounts.

How our work contributes to the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)

Priority Outcome Link to SDGs
Priority Outcome 1 SDG 1 - End poverty in all its forms everywhere (Target 1.2)
  SDG 4 – Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all (Targets 4.4, 4.5, 4.6)
  SDG 5 - Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls (Target 5.4)
  SDG 8 – Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all (Targets 8.5, 8.6)

Projects and Programmes

Deliver Government’s Plan for Jobs, supported by 13,500 new Work Coaches, which includes:

  1. Aiming to create 250,000 roles through the Kickstart scheme.

  2. Supporting people who have spent at least 12 months out of work through Restart.

  3. Implementing the Work and Health Programme Job Entry Targeted Support (JETS) scheme.

  4. Providing Job Finding Support for 160,000 claimants.

  5. Delivering 80,000 Sector-based Work Academy Placements.

Expanding our test of Local Supported Employment, supporting people with a learning disability and/or autism or severe mental health conditions through providing intensive one-to-one support to enter and stay in work.

Expanding Employment Advisers in Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) provision (in England).

Continuing to deliver the ‘Move to Universal Credit’ – supporting claimants on legacy benefits to transition to Universal Credit.

These activities are in addition to the labour market regime delivered through jobcentre plus to support claimants on Universal Credit and other working age benefits to find work.

We are also working with other government departments to progress this outcome. This includes:

Working closely with DfE through building complementary services for young people while expanding and replacing our youth offer to include the Youth Employment Programme, Youth Hubs and Youth Employability coaches to provide intensive support for young jobseekers. The work is complemented by DfE’s Apprenticeship Programme. Details for which can be found in the DfE’s Outcome Delivery Plan.

Working with the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) as they develop the Employment Bill to establish an employment framework that keeps pace with the needs of modern workplaces and provides support for people facing particularly challenging circumstances.

Working with MHCLG and other government departments on the development of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund to address inequality within and between the regions so that wraparound employment, skills and social inclusion provisions are targeted to reflect the needs of people and organisations in local areas. Further details of the Shared Prosperity Fund can be found in MHCLG’s Outcome Delivery Plan.

HMT will continue to work towards delivering policies which promote macroeconomic stability and protect jobs as we recover from the pandemic. It will also deliver its commitments to support employment as detailed within the HMT ODP.

Outcome Evaluation Plan

DWP has a strong track record of evaluating the impact of policies aimed to support people into work including through the application of experimental, quasi-experimental and mixed methods approaches. As part of the delivery of Plan for Jobs we are agreeing a substantial mixed methods evaluation programme aimed at understanding the additional impact that new labour market policies have had.

Priority Outcome 2

Improve opportunities for all through work, including groups that are currently under-represented in the workforce

Lead minister[s]

Senior Sponsor

Outcome Strategy

Improving employment opportunities for everyone, including groups that are currently under-represented in the labour market is an integral part of the government’s ambition to build back better following the pandemic. As the impacts of the pandemic have seen the most disadvantaged groups disproportionately impacted, it is now more important than ever to ensure everyone has the opportunity to enter and progress in work.

We will continue to monitor the impacts of the pandemic on specific customer groups and labour market sectors, using this evolving picture to inform our labour market response. We will do this through a range of targeted support – including delivering: the Work and Health Programme; Individual Placement and Support which provides those with mental health conditions the one-to-one support they need in order to gain competitive paid employment; and our wider employment support offer for underrepresented groups.

As we look to maintain and expand the support to those who need it the most, we will continue to listen and be informed by our external partners and organisations. For example, the Health is Everyone’s Business consultation set out a balanced package of measures to reduce ill-health related job loss. The response to this consultation will set out our next steps.

Our performance metrics

Disability employment rate gap

Quarter Disability employment rate gap
Jan to Mar 2021 28.6%
Jan to Mar 2020 28.9%
Jan to Mar 2019 29.8%
Jan to Mar 2018 30.3%

Source: ONS labour market statistics

Release schedule: monthly (quarterly comparisons recommended).

How our work contributes to the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)

Priority Outcome Link to SDGs
Priority Outcome 2 SDG 3 - Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages (Targets 3.5, 3.9)
  SDG 8 – Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all (Targets 8.5, 8.6)

Projects and Programmes

Delivering the Work and Health Programme to help people with disabilities or disadvantaged groups to enter into and stay in work.

Deliver and improve Access to Work supporting disabled people to start or stay in work.

Deliver the manifesto commitment to have Prison Work Coaches in every prison.

Continue to offer Intensive Personalised Employment Support (IPES) for people with disabilities and health conditions.

Continuing our provision of Individual Placement and Support (IPS) including support for those with alcohol or drug addiction (IPS-AD).

Continue reform of the fit note to provide better back-to-work advice for individuals.

Continuing work on Disability Retention and Employment including the response to the Health is Everyone’s Business consultation, consulting on changes to Statutory Sick Pay, Occupational Health, and developing local information and advice.

Use the Flexible Support Fund (FSF), a locally managed budget, to supplement existing services and tailor support to the needs of individuals in the local area. FSF awards are discretionary, aimed at improving claimants’ job prospects.

Outcome Evaluation Plan

DWP has a strong track record of being able to evaluate the impact of policies designed to help people move into work and are committed to evaluating the impact of policies which are already rolled out on a national basis. This includes the Work and Health Programme, where we are undertaking a substantial evaluation employing both a Randomised Control Trial (RCT) and qualitative research to understand impact.

Across this outcome we are undertaking substantial trials, deploying a range of evaluation techniques from RCTs, to qualitative and quantitative assessments to understand the additional impact for groups being targeted. This in turn will help inform more robust policy decision making over the coming years.

Priority Outcome 3

Address poverty through enabling progression in the workforce and increasing financial resilience.

Lead minister[s]

  • Will Quince MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Welfare Delivery

  • Guy Opperman MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Pensions and Financial Inclusion

  • Baroness Stedman-Scott, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Lords)

Senior Sponsor

  • Jonathan Mills, Director General, Labour Market Policy and Implementation

Outcome Strategy

DWP’s vision is to improve people’s quality of life both now and in the future through a wide range of services which support financial resilience throughout the lifetime of our customers – from the Child Maintenance Service to working-age benefits to the State Pension. The estimated spend on welfare support for people of working age and children in 2020 to 2021 was over £105bn. With an additional £7.4bn of COVID-19 related welfare policy measures this increased to over £112bn.

This year we will drive the government’s disability agenda through the National Strategy for Disabled People and expect to publish a Health and Disability Green Paper that will set out how we can better meet the needs of disabled people and people with health conditions, now and in the future. We will also begin the statutory review of the State Pension age, as well as considering the recommendations of the McGregor-Smith In-Work Progression Commission.

Our Arm’s Length Bodies are key to delivering this vision. Earlier this year the Money and Pensions Service increased capacity to offer debt advice to respond to the economic fallout from the pandemic. Looking ahead, our goal is to ensure DWP helps people build resilience and financial independence.

Departments supporting the outcome delivery:

  • DfE
  • MHCLG
  • HMT

Our performance metrics

Absolute poverty before housing costs – child, adult and pensioner combined

Year Absolute poverty before housing costs - child, adult and pensioner combined
2019 to 2020 14.0%
2018 to 2019 14.8%
2017 to 2018 14.6%

Source: Households below average income (HBAI) statistics

Release schedule: annually

Number of children in workless households – National

Year Number of children in workless households
2019 1.244m
2018 1.318m
2017 1.351m

Source: ONS, number of children in workless households

Release schedule: annually

Number of children in workless households

Year England Scotland Wales Northern Ireland
2019 1.014m 97,510 73,786 58,806
2018 1.087m 103,104 68,724 59,014
2017 1.117m 101,481 67,598 65,136

Source: ONS, number of children in workless households by nation

Release schedule: annually

Percentage of claims processed within planned timescales

Year Percentage of claims processed within planned timescales
2019 to 2020 76.7%
2018 to 2019 -
2017 to 2018 -

New claims include Credit (UC), Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), State Pension (SP), Pension Credit (PC), Disability Living Allowance (DLA), Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Child Maintenance (CMG).

Historical data for previous key ‘claims processed within planned timescales’ (JSA, ESA, IS, SP, PC, DLA, PIP and CMG, 2016 – 2017 to 2018 – 2019, and JSA, ESA and IS, 2012 – 2013 to 2015 – 2016) is included in DWP’s Annual Report and Accounts. Due to the change in the methodology the measures are not directly comparable.

How our work contributes to the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)

Priority Outcome Link to SDGs
Priority Outcome 3 SDG 1 - End poverty in all its forms everywhere (Targets 1.2, 1.3)
  SDG 5 – Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls (Target 5.4)
  SDG 8 – Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all (Targets 8.5, 8.6, 8.10)

Projects and Programmes

Publish the Health and Disability Green Paper.

The Health Transformation Programme will deliver improvements to the current health and disability benefits system, making it easier to navigate for claimants and delivering better value for money for taxpayers.

The Child Maintenance Service will continue to explore ways of improving its service for customers as well as supporting separated parents to make their own maintenance arrangements.

Delivering the next phase of the Reducing Parental Conflict Programme (in England).

Maintaining the pension triple lock. We will also maintain and stabilise the Automatic Enrolment (AE) system in light of COVID-19 (including supporting the AE element delivery of Kickstart) and continue to explore how to increase pension savings amongst the self-employed.

Ensure the efficient delivery of the annual uprating of pensions and benefits.

Bring forward regulations to implement the measures in the Pension Schemes Act including facilitating a new form of pension scheme (collective defined contribution), enabling trustees to protect members from potential scam schemes and ensuring pension schemes play their role in the climate agenda.

Ensure that the Money and Pensions Service is proactive in supporting financial resilience and developing the mid-life MOT.

Continue the delivery of the pensions dashboards. We are also working with other government departments to progress this outcome. This includes:

Reducing the risk of future poverty through DfE’s skills and education policy.

Working with MHCLG to address the drivers of poverty through interventions such as the Supporting Families Programme.

Working with MHCLG on their commitments to ensure access to affordable housing, and provide Discretionary Housing Payments to support claimants at risk of homelessness to remain in their homes or move to more suitable accommodation. Further details of housing commitments can be found in MHCLG’s Outcome Delivery Plan.

HMT will consider the role of tax policy in reducing the impact of poverty, and consider the distributional effects of any changes to tax policy.

This is in addition to the Department’s ongoing Retirement Services offer which includes: the State Pension, Pension Credit, Bereavement Services, Winter Fuel Payment and Cold Weather Payments, Attendance Allowance and Carer’s Allowance.

Outcome Evaluation Plan

We are using a range of different evaluation methods to assess the programmes related to priority outcome 3. This includes the use of longitudinal data, quasi-experimental methods and theory of change based evaluations to robustly assess the impact of the interventions from across the Health Transformation Programme, the Reducing Parental Conflict Programme (in England) and to help us understand more around the impact of Discretionary Housing Payments. This approach will help us understand more about the impact of these policies and will inform future decisions around policy design and roll out.

Priority Outcome 4

Deliver a reliable, high-quality welfare and pensions system which customers have confidence in.

Lead minister[s]

Senior Sponsor

Outcome Strategy

This priority outcome covers activities which support the excellent delivery of our services. This includes increasing the use of customer insights, tailoring services to our customers, and building the join-up around significant life events so people only need to tell us about a bereavement once. A core focus of activities to deliver this outcome is working compassionately with customers while learning from their feedback through, for example, launching a new customer experience survey and the ongoing use of the Serious Case Panel.

Alongside improving our services for the benefit of taxpayers, the Department is committed to bearing down on overall fraud and error levels and the monetary value of fraud and error and has committed to setting a target once we have the next set of national statistics. The Department has also agreed to report progress against a series of National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee recommendations.

We have an ambitious strategy to do this which looks to move the balance from downstream detection to upstream prevention, including through initiatives such as improving and automating our verification processes and increasing the use of data analytics

Our performance metrics

Gross monetary value of fraud and error (by value and proportion)
Year Underpayments Overpayments
2020 to 2021 1.2% (£2.5bn) 3.9% (£8.4bn)
2019 to 2020 1.1% (£2.0bn) 2.4% (£4.6bn)
2018 to 2019 1.1% (£2.0bn) 2.2% (£4.1bn)
2017 to 2018 1.0% (£1.7bn) 2.1% (£3.8bn)

Source: Fraud and error in the benefit system

Release schedule: annually

Fraud and Error methodology was revised in 2020, which means it is not possible to make direct comparisons prior to 2018/19. The overall Fraud and Error level increase to 2.4% in 2019 to 2020 was primarily because there was an increase in Universal Credit (UC) expenditure (an increase from £8.1bn in 2018 to 2019, to £18.4bn in 2019 to 2020) and UC has a higher rate of overpayments than the other benefits we measure.

Percentage of claimants satisfied with DWP services overall

Year Percentage of claimants satisfied with DWP services overall
2018 to 2019 81%
2017 to 2018 84%
2016 to 2017 86%

Source: DWP Claimant Service and Experience Survey

Release schedule: annually

Number of people automatically enrolled in workplace pensions

Year Number of people automatically enrolled in workplace pensions (millions)
2021 10.4
2020 10.3
2019 10.1
2018 9.5

Source: The Pensions Regulator

Release schedule: annually

How our work contributes to the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)

Priority Outcome Link to SDGs
Priority Outcome 4 SDG 16 - Promote peaceful and inclusive societies (Targets 16.4, 16.6)

Projects and Programmes

Transforming the delivery of State Pension by further iterating the ‘Get your State Pension’ service, enabling on-line claims and maintenance.

Simplifying the user journey for Carers Allowance customers enabling citizens to complete their claim online. Introducing process automation into the Bereavement Service, Disability Living Allowance for Children Service and the Pension Credit customer journey, to support delivery of Cold Weather Payments and Christmas Bonus and to deliver end-to-end automated processing solutions for new style claims.

Improving the appeals process through the Modernising Dissatisfaction Programme, enabling citizens to exercise their rights if they are dissatisfied with the Department’s services.

Increasing our sustainability and resilience by increasing automation, the intelligent use of data and joining up systems through work including developing a single service for bereaved citizens and transformation of Personal Independence Payments.

Increase the use of customer insight to better tailor services, targeting interventions where and when they have most impact.

Working smartly and flexibly to deliver services when, where, and how our customers need us. This involves empowering Work Coaches, testing the use of video and alternative channels to build the evidence for health assessments and introducing video calling in Universal Credit.

Encouraging and supporting customers to convert their payment method from the Post Office Card Account to a standard account.

Working in partnership with the Scottish Government to devolve benefits as set out in the Scotland Act 2016. Continuing to reduce and prevent fraud and error in benefit expenditure to deliver value for money for the taxpayer and improve the customer journey including through:

  • Continuing to develop identity, risk and trust services to safeguard Annually Managed Expenditure (AME) within digital service delivery.

  • Automating verification processes to better target fraud prevention.

  • Evolving the scope and coverage of the Integrated Risk and Intelligence Service (IRIS) to provide a single view of fraud, error and debt risk and expert support for the whole Department.

  • Alongside improving our services, the Department is committed to bearing down on overall fraud and error levels and has committed to setting a target once we have the next set of national statistics. The Department has also agreed to report progress against a series of National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee recommendations.

Outcome Evaluation Plan

We have an agreed service delivery performance framework that prioritises the above outcomes, customer experience, quality and efficient processes. However, we are investing in improvements to how we deliver in all of these areas, and will evaluate these projects as they are delivered, alongside tracking performance outcomes. Appropriate evaluation and benefit realisation plans will be put in place drawing on best practice, to help us monitor and isolate the impacts.

D. Strategic Enablers

Workforce, Skills and Location

Our ambition is for DWP to be a flexible, inclusive and continuously learning organisation able to identify the right solutions for our customers and their communities. We want to make DWP a great place to work and through our People Strategy we will do this by:

  1. Ensuring we have the capacity to support the economic recovery.

  2. Making the most of, and continuously developing the skills in our workforce, supporting our intention to be an organisation that learns from its interactions with communities and citizens.

  3. Striving to be an exemplar employer – in keeping our people and citizens safe and supporting schemes for those without work.

  4. Reinforcing the systems for talent management and performance management to address the personal and professional development needs and reward performance in line with government and departmental priorities.

  5. Ensuring the organisation reflects the country we serve by relocating staff, including Senior Civil Service (SCS), from London.

  6. Continuing to remove barriers to recruitment, development and promotion of a diverse workforce.

We will monitor our progress in meeting these objectives using the following indicators:

People survey engagement score

Year Engagement score
2020 63%
2019 59%
2018 59%

Source: Civil Service People Survey

Release schedule: annually

Representation of female staff, ethnic minority staff and disabled staff

Year Total Number of Staff (full-time equivalent) Female Ethnic minority Disabled
2020 75,590 65.9% 15.6% 17.6%
2019 68,742 66.3% 13.0% 11.4%
2018 73,202 66.5% 12.6% 7.7%

Source: Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Dashboard

Release schedule: quarterly

Innovation, Technology and Data

DWP’s digital infrastructure plays a fundamental role in how citizens access and engage with our services. Our vision is for DWP to be a modern organisation which makes better use of data through digitalising services and automating processes. We will do this by:

  1. Accelerating the digitisation of services at scale and pace to improve the citizen experience and increase efficiency. This includes renewing IT systems to automate and fully digitise repetitive manual process and update outdated legacy IT systems.

  2. Making better use of data to achieve DWP’s priority outcomes. We want to improve the way we collect, consume and store our data, embedding the highest standards of data quality, protection, ethics and security, so that we can better connect our services, inform and improve our policy making and improve the way our customers experience and use our services.

  3. Maintaining and continuously improving our digital services to maximise performance, protect data and reduce technical debt.

  4. Investing in the tools, processes, standards and frameworks needed to enable safe, secure data sharing across departments to support decision making and improve services.

Delivery, Evaluation and Collaboration

DWP is committed to improving our internal processes to ensure that we can deliver the strongest outcome to citizens and tax payers. We will do this by:

  1. Managing the planning cycle in such a way that it engages all staff in delivering priorities, through a well understood, efficient and transparent process. This includes using our annual planning activity to facilitate prioritisation across and between product lines while also ensuring that it is clearly visible to all of our staff in how their work delivers the Department’s core objectives.

  2. Strengthening functional expertise and delivery, ensuring adherence to functional standards and effective monitoring of performance. Our function leads provide an essential role in safeguarding and managing risk in the Department and work closely with their counterparts in central functional teams to ensure that external learning is brought into the department.

  3. Providing transparent accountability through regular reporting, both within the Department, to the centre and parliament. We regularly review our services through independent reviews as well as external reports to ensure we are delivering good value for money and robust services. We also report regularly to the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) on those programmes on the Government Major Project and Programme portfolio and Programmes engage with the IPA Gateway assurance reviews as appropriate.

Sustainability

As part of our continued work to deliver on the government’s 25-year environmental plan, we will:

  1. Ensure that we have a plan in place to enable us to meet our Greening Government Commitments and continue to monitor and track their delivery. We monitor and track progress against our Greening Government Commitments. Currently, with the challenges we face as the government’s largest department with over 20 million customers, we are fully meeting these commitments. However, our approach has and will be impacted by COVID-19 as additional estate capacity required to support additional demand on our services and the delivery of the Plan for Jobs will see an increase in total carbon emissions. As new properties are acquired and fitted out, consideration is given to sustainability and minimising the environmental impact of our operations.

  2. Continue to ensure that our estate, activities and policies are sustainable and support climate change, resilience and adaptation. We have developed a Carbon & Water Management Plan and are developing a Sustainability Management Plan, which will set out our proposals to reduce DWP’s environmental impact on its estate and to support government’s Net Zero Carbon ambitions. We are also working with partners across government to consider sustainability within our broader pensions and labour market policies and contribute to the BEIS led Green Jobs Taskforce which focuses on the immediate and longer-term challenges of delivering skilled workers for the UK’s transition to Net Zero Carbon, a cross government priority outcome.

Our key activities also include:

  • Regular reporting on our progress against current Greening Government Commitments (GGC) to DEFRA. Forthcoming new GGC targets will run to 2024 to 2025 and we will continue to report against these new targets to Defra annually.

  • Signing off and the implementation of DWP Estates’ Carbon and Water Management Plan and Sustainability Management Plan.

  • A new pan-DWP Sustainability Governance Board at Director level is to be set up.

  • We have attracted Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme grant funding of £5.4 million to implement a heat decarbonisation/energy efficiency project at Quarry House, as well as Building Management System optimisation at a further 19 sites. In total, these interventions are forecast to save 2,164 tonnes of CO2 per annum, representing a 2% reduction in DWP’s total carbon emissions.

Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (against 2009 to 2010)

Year Total emissions (%)
2018 to 2019 59.7%
2017 to 2018 50.7%
2016 to 2017 44%

Source: Greening Government Commitments annual reports

Release schedule: annually

E. Our equality objectives

We have set objectives to help us advance equality. These are:

1. Ensuring our customers have access to reasonable adjustments or additional support to enable them to access benefits, use our services and meet their individual responsibilities.

2. Embedding a consistent approach to equality analysis in the design and delivery of change ensuring informed consideration of how equality legislation impacts on customers.

3. Strengthening implementation of the Family Test assessment in all our domestic policy areas, including Family Test outcomes in all relevant policy advice submitted to our ministers and promoting cross-government implementation.

4. As part of our commitment to build back fairer we will take targeted action to support those who are under-represented, or who face additional barriers, to fully engage with the labour market and have access to support including:

  • Levelling up employment outcomes for underrepresented groups so that services work for women, those from ethnic minority backgrounds and supporting those on low incomes to progress in work

  • Tackling employment gap inequalities by levelling up the employment outcomes of ethnic minority jobseekers in areas where there is a high ethnic minority population and a high employment gap

5. Work to ensure that employers have the support and confidence to create healthy and inclusive workplaces, including through the Disability Confident campaign.

6. In line with HMG’s commitment to improve representation so that public appointments reflect the diversity of the nation, we will work to ensure that public appointments made by DWP contribute to realising the ambition that by 2022, 50% of all public appointees are female and 14% of all public appointments made are from ethnic minorities.

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