Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many officials of his Department at each grade have undergone more than 12 hours of training on universal credit; and how many officials of each grade will have undertaken such training on the completion of the full roll-out of universal credit.

The Department’s policy is to develop its staff in the skills and knowledge required to support a range of customers and deliver their services.

Universal Credit continues to be rolled out throughout the country and staff continue to be trained to support the implementation. Since the answer of 12 September 2016 to Question 44399, there have been a further 4,880 colleagues that have undergone more than 12 hours of training on Universal Credit. This takes the total number of colleagues to 17,047. However, due to a change in reporting systems a breakdown by grade could only be provided at a disproportionate cost.

We are planning that all DWP staff who will be working with Universal Credit by the time of full roll out will have completed the required training. We plan on a flexible basis to meet customer demand and therefore forecasts vary.