People risk being pushed into poverty by DWP’s continuing unacceptably poor service - PAC
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- Disability benefit claimants' year-plus waits for claims to be
processed highlighted as PAC returns to scrutiny of Department for
Work and Pensions (DWP) - Work coach cuts risk claimants with more
complex needs missing out on support they need Government has no
adequate short-term plan to improve delays in the disability
benefit system. In a new report on the DWP, the Public Accounts
Committee (PAC) is calling out the unacceptable waits some people
face for their...Request free trial
- Disability benefit claimants' year-plus waits for claims to be processed highlighted as PAC returns to scrutiny of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) - Work coach cuts risk claimants with more complex needs missing out on support they need Government has no adequate short-term plan to improve delays in the disability benefit system. In a new report on the DWP, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is calling out the unacceptable waits some people face for their Personal Independent Payment (PIP) to be processed, which can cause them to get into debt and push them into poverty. The report cites examples of people waiting over a year for their PIP claims to be processed. The DWP told the PAC's inquiry that this evidence is not showing up in its statistics, while acknowledging it as a situation that it needed to address. Government's aim is to process three quarters of new PIP claims within 75 working days, but only a little over half of these claims were processed within this timeframe in '24-'25. The DWP hopes to make the claims process more efficient as it tests its online application process in a few postcodes; this is in the context of having told the PAC three years ago that it intended to process up to 20% of PIP claims using this new service by 2026. It now says that it believes it can reach this target by 2029. This is far too long for claimants to have to wait for improvements, and the DWP must now say when more PIP claimants can expect a better service. The PAC is also continuing to highlight the potentially adverse impact of DWP's cuts to the time spent in a first meeting between a Universal Credit claimant and their work coach – from 50 minutes, to half an hour. Government has now acknowledged it does not have quantitative evidence on the impact of this change, with the PAC noting that no feedback had been gathered from claimants. The DWP has said there is flexibility in the schedule of work coaches (the shortage of which PAC has already found the government to have been complacent about) to manage their meeting times and lengths. The report warns that without some mitigating action from government, claimants with more complex needs may not get the support they need. The PAC is further questioning recent reforms shifting responsibility for adult skills from the Department for Education (DfE) to the DWP. These changes mean DWP will need to set up its new jobs and careers service by October 2026, with careers advice to be provided by its own staff. With the PAC having previously raised concerns on the reduction of support for benefit claimants driven by a shortage of work coaches, the report warns that persistently stretched jobcentres combined with this tight timetable for integration by October could make it difficult for the DWP to absorb its new responsibilities and provide an effective and joined-up jobs, careers and skills offer. Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “When elected as Chair of the PAC, I promised to return to areas of weakness in government policy delivery identified in our scrutiny that were not improving quickly enough. One of those areas is the treatment by the DWP of disability benefits claimants, who, our report finds, may now expect a reliably poor service from the Department. Our Committee received reassurances three years ago that improvements would have manifested by now; we are now told that they are a further three years off. This is simply not good enough for our constituents, who we know risk being pushed into debt or poverty by a Department unresponsive to their needs. “The summer of last year was consumed by debate around proposed changes to the benefits system, with government insisting changes to PIP would be mitigated by support for disabled people and people with long-term conditions to get back into work. Our report exposes the incoherence with which government made these arguments, while cutting the all-important support provided by work coaches which could help those same people access the labour market. Our focus will remain trained on what mitigating action will be taken by DWP on this issue, as well as its overall efforts to modernise its services by reducing its reliance on out-of-date technology. For claimants who rely upon this system's proper functioning, this programme of transformation cannot come quickly enough.” PAC report conclusions and recommendations The Department has not yet made clear how it plans to bring together the jobs and careers service with its new responsibilities for adult skills, in order to deliver the Government's objectives. In September 2025, the Government announced that, from then, responsibility for apprenticeships, adult further education, skills, training and careers, and Skills England, would move from the Department for Education to the Department for Work and Pensions. Following this, in October 2025, the Government published a white paper which set out plans to "reform the post-16 education and skills system so that it supports the development of the skilled workforce our economy needs". The Department is in the process of setting up the new jobs and careers service, which will need to be completed by October 2026 when the current National Careers Service contracts come to an end. The Department intends that, subsequently, careers advice services will be provided by its own staff, but did not indicate how it expects to integrate skills provision with the jobs and careers service. We have previously raised concerns about the Department reducing support for benefit claimants because of the shortage of work coaches, and this persistent shortfall of resourcing within jobcentres as well as the tight timetable for integration, could make it difficult for the Department to absorb its new responsibilities and provide an effective and joined-up jobs, careers and skills offer. Recommendation 1. The Department should, alongside its Treasury Minute response, write to the Committee setting out how it will integrate its new responsibilities for skills with the jobs and careers service, including details of key milestones, in order to deliver the objectives set out in the Post-16 Education and Skills white paper. The Department does not have assurance that shortening the first meeting a Universal Credit claimant has with a work coach to 30 minutes will not adversely affect the support it provides. We reported previously that 57% of jobcentres had used the Department's 'local flexibility framework' which set out measures that jobcentres could implement when the caseload of their work coaches became too high. In June 2025, the Department wrote to tell us that it had made three of the measures in the framework permanent, including shortening the first meeting that claimants have with a work coach from 50 to 30 minutes. In September 2025, the Department wrote to us again and acknowledged that it lacks quantitative evidence on the impact of this change. While the Department has some feedback from frontline staff that claimants can be adequately supported within the reduced timeframe, we note that it has gathered no feedback from claimants. The Department says there is flexibility in work coaches' schedules to allow for initial meetings to be extended if needed, or for subsequent meetings to be arranged. However, this seems to be at the discretion of individual work coaches and we fear that the bar to qualify for an extended meeting may be set too high. Without clear guidelines, claimants with more complex needs may not get the support they need. Recommendation 2. The Department should set out how it will monitor the impact of shortening the first meeting claimants have with a work coach, including how it will assess the impact on different groups of claimants. As part of its monitoring, the Department should obtain feedback from claimants. Greater transparency about jobcentre performance is needed to enable effective local scrutiny. In our July 2025 report on Jobcentres, we recommended that the Department should set out how it will increase transparency around jobcentres, for example by regularly publishing jobcentre-level data, including data on work coach numbers against need and into-work rates. On the day of our evidence session in October 2025, the Department published the first in a new series of quarterly labour market insights. This publication provides into-work data at jobcentre district and local authority level but not for individual jobcentres, and provides no information on work coach numbers. In seeking to justify its approach, the Department says that data at jobcentre level are less robust and subject to more volatility, and that it is concerned that publishing data at this level could lead to it having to explain the particular circumstances of each jobcentre, which would require a lot of resources. We are disappointed by this response and, while we welcome the new publication, without greater transparency, effective local scrutiny of jobcentre performance will not be possible. Recommendation 3. The Department should be more transparent by implementing our previous recommendation to publish regularly jobcentre-level data, including data on work coach numbers against need and into-work rates. These data could be included in the new quarterly labour market insights publication. It is unacceptable how long some PIP claimants are having to wait for their claims to be processed, which can cause them to get into debt and push them into poverty. The Department does not have an adequate plan to improve this in the short term. The Department aims to process 75% of new PIP claims within 75 working days but, in 2024-25, only 51% of claims were processed within this timeframe. We have constituents who have waited a long time for their claims to be processed, in some cases over a year. As it has done previously, the Department pointed to its Health Transformation Programme as the long-term solution to improving the service it provides to PIP claimants. As part of this, the Department is testing in a few postcodes an online application process, which it says has typically reduced the time taken to process claims by 20 days and enabled it to achieve its target. In 2023, the Department told the previous Committee that it intended to process up to 20% of PIP claims using the new online service by 2026. We are concerned, however, that this timetable may not be achieved as the Department now says only that it believes it can reach the 20% target by 2029 when the programme is due to be completed. This is far too long for claimants to have to wait to get a better service. We note that the programme is likely to be used to apply a test and learn approach to the recommendations that come out of the Timms review of PIP, however, the Department should not allow this to result in further delays to improvements. Recommendation 4. Alongside its Treasury Minute response, the Department should write to the Committee to provide:
— within the target of 75 working days; — after the 75-day target but within six months; — after six months but within 12 months; and — after 12 months. The Department should also provide details of the longest waiting time recorded in 2024-25.
While we are encouraged that the Department has ambitious plans to address the risks associated with its legacy IT systems, implementing these plans over the next three years will be highly challenging. Reducing reliance on legacy IT systems is a key part of the Department's service modernisation programme and will also help it to manage the significant cyber risks it faces. The Department plans to reduce the overall risk from its legacy IT systems by 58% over the next three years and to tackle the larger systems which are used by more staff and customers first. If implemented successfully, these plans could transform the Department's customer service and productivity. For example, the Department told us it is piloting a customer account which would enable citizens to do things across multiple benefits, rather than just one by one. However, as we have noted before, major digital transformation programmes have often failed to deliver as intended, and government is struggling to modernise a legacy environment at the same time as harbouring a major ambition to exploit opportunities from new technologies such as AI. Recommendation 5. The Department should set out more information about:
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