Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that Job Centre Pluses can manage potential increased demand after the end of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.

The pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the UK labour market, leading to an increase in demand for DWP’s services. As part of the Government’s ongoing commitment to support claimants back into work, the Department has recruited 13,500 additional Work Coaches to respond effectively to this increase and to help provide the full range of Jobcentre services to both existing and new customers so they can receive benefit payments as well as being supported into work.

The Department has seen, and anticipates further, an increase in demand for our services and as a result, we are rapidly expanding the space available, on a temporary basis. This increase cannot be contained within existing premises both due to the scale of the increase in demand and social distancing requirements.

Through our Plan for Jobs, we are targeting tailored support schemes to help claimants prepare for, get into and progress in work. These include: Kickstart, delivering tens of thousands of six-month work placements for Universal Credit claimants aged 16-24 at risk of unemployment; Restart, which provides 12 months’ intensive employment support to Universal Credit claimants who are unemployed for a year; and Job Entry Targeted Support (JETS), which provides light touch employment support for people who are claiming either Universal Credit or New Style Jobseekers Allowance, for up to 6 months, helping participants effectively re-engage with the labour market and focus their job search.