Jobcentres: Coronavirus

(asked on 8th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of the capacity of Job Centre Plus to continue to provide services with (a) increased demand and (b) pressures on staff as a result of the covid-19 outbreak.


Answered by
Mims Davies Portrait
Mims Davies
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 7th July 2020

Between the 16th March and the end of April, we received over 1.8 million claims for Universal Credit. Overall, that is six times the volume that we would typically experience, and in one week we had a tenfold increase. DWP is standing up to this challenge and payment timeliness for Universal Credit remains high.

We have re-deployed around 10,000 staff to critical frontline services and made important changes to processes.

The Department is continually impacting and assessing the service being offered to customers and we continue to keep staff numbers under review as part of our response to the impact of COVID-19 on the labour market.

Throughout this period, we have collected insight from DWP colleagues on their experiences. We have also refreshed and developed a wide range of wellbeing resources to support our people and will continue to do so.

The Department is continually assessing the service being offered to customers and we continue to keep staff numbers under review as part of our response to the impact of COVID-19 on the labour market. We have already committed to increasing the number of Work Coaches and Case Managers and recruitment is already underway.

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