Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what performance targets she has set for the Work and Health Programme.

The Work and Health Programme is designed to help move people in to sustained employment. The performance targets that we have set will measure how successful suppliers are in doing so.

Performance of Work and Health Programme (WHP) contracts will be measured by the percentage of individuals starting the programme who go on to sustain employment or self-employment which meets the WHP job outcome definitions. Performance targets have been set for each geographical Contract Package Area (CPA). Within each CPA, we have also set performance targets for the three Customer Groups and the Devolved Deal Areas.

In addition to achievement of the job outcome performance, DWP will measure supplier performance against a series of Customer Service Standards (CSS). This is to ensure that participants have a positive experience of their time on the programme.

As part of the commercial tender process, bidders were evaluated on the key elements of their delivery models and the associated level of uplift to performance, to ensure robust and stretching performance offers, and meaningful and measurable CSS. These offers were incorporated in to their contracts, and constitute the targets to which DWP will hold suppliers.

Contractual performance targets remain commercially sensitive. It is anticipated outcomes against performance expectations will be published in the release of Official Statistics, dependent on user need and the quality of the associated data.