Welcome to the April edition of in touch

Each month, in touch keeps you up to date with the latest news from Jobcentre Plus.

This edition includes some great news about the National Audit Office’s report on the roll-out of our network; and an interesting insight into how Nissan are making the most of the Local Employment Partnership recruitment drive.

There’s also important information on the new Employment Support Allowance rates; the introduction of compulsory work focussed interviews; and details of an additional prescribed disease under the Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit.

If you have a suggestion for a future edition, or any feedback, please let us know.

Latest news

National Audit Office report praises roll-out of Jobcentre Plus office network

February saw the publication of the National Audit Office’s (NAO) report on the roll-out of the Jobcentre Plus Office network. It was good news for Jobcentre Plus, as the report concluded that the programme was delivered successfully, within budget and with significant savings against the agreed budget of £2.2 billion.

The completion of roll-out means that Jobcentre Plus now has a network of modern Jobcentres, Contact Centres and Benefit Delivery Centres. Beginning with 56 pathfinders at the end of 2001, it has lead to the delivery of over 800 centres - one of the largest construction programmes undertaken in this country in recent yeas.

Jobcentre Plus’ Chief Executive Lesley Strathie praised the contribution of her staff to the achievement, saying, "Our people have done a terrific job. The success of the programme reflects the skill and dedication of lots of people - a huge team effort across Jobcentre Plus and DWP."

Jobcentre Plus Strategy and Business Plan

The latest Jobcentre Plus Business Plan outlines how the organisation will be at the heart of the welfare to work system. We will continue to help people find work; employers fill their vacancies; pay benefits; and offer personal adviser services and employment support through a network of local offices. But we will do more.

By working with employers and a broader range of partners we will help more customers, who might currently be overlooked in the labour market, to find and progress in work by:

• Introducing Employment Support Allowance -  a new regime of financial support and back-to-work help for people with a health condition or disability.
• Helping customers to improve skills and employability through an integrated employment and skills service.
• Supporting more parents to move into sustained employment and lift their families out of poverty.

By transforming our services we will help customers access the services, benefits and financial support they need by:

• Joining up delivery of benefits/ tax credits and services from DWP, HMRC and local authorities.
• Developing DWP self service telephone and internet options through Directgov which are easy and convenient to use.

We won’t be able to do everything by ourselves. We will increasingly look to the expertise of our partners in the public, private and voluntary sectors to deliver specialist help to customers facing longer term unemployment and to employers for the successful creation of Local Employment Partnerships.

Read the Jobcentre Plus Business Plan online, or find out more information in the DWP Three Year Plan.

Update on Employment Support Allowance regulations and rates

The rates and regulations for the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) were announced on 27 March.

ESA will be introduced in October 2008, and will replace Incapacity Benefit and Income Support paid on incapacity grounds for new customers only.

Central to the allowance is a new medical assessment, which looks at what people can do, and not just what they cannot do. For those with more severe levels of disability, entitlement to benefit will be decided on the basis of paper evidence, for example from their GP or someone in the community who is involved in looking after them, rather than an interview.

Those who receive ESA will fall into two groups. Most will be in the Work-Related Activity Group and will be expected to take reasonable steps to help prepare for a return to work. To do this, Jobcentre Plus will build on the successful Pathways to Work scheme.

The most severely disabled - those in the Support Group - will not be expected to actively prepare for work, but support will still be available for those who wish to access this on a voluntary basis.

During the Assessment Phase - the first 13 weeks of a claim - the basic rate will be £60.50 for single people aged over 25. After this stage, the main rate of ESA for those in the Work-Related Activity Group will be £84.50 a week. The main rate for the Support Group will be higher at £89.50 a week with £12.60 automatically paid on top where claimants have no other income. This will create a minimum income guarantee of £102.10 a week for those in the Support Group.

People currently receiving Incapacity Benefit or Income Support due to incapacity will continue to receive their existing benefits, subject to satisfying the entitlement conditions. ESA will initially be for new customers only.

Work Capability Assessment

A new Work Capability Assessment (WCA) will be introduced as part of the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) regime. It will replace the Personal Capability Assessment.

In his Budget speech, the Chancellor announced that, from 2010, Incapacity Benefit (IB) customers will be subject to a WCA when they are due to have their benefit entitlement reassessed. All IB customers will, over a three year period, have their benefit entitlement reassessed using the descriptors and scores in the new test.

IB customers will not take the work-focused health-related assessment that is another part of the ESA regime.

Those who satisfy the WCA will remain on IB, and will be able to volunteer for Pathways.

Customers who fail to satisfy the WCA and are found capable of work will have their IB claim terminated - and will be able to claim Jobseeker's Allowance.

Private and voluntary sectors to help tackle unemployment

A new approach to working with providers in order to increase the number of people entering and staying in work has been announced in DWPs Commissioning Strategy.

Private and voluntary sector organisations will now be paid not only to help support customers who have been long-term unemployed into work, but into sustainable work.

Following November’s Interim Report, the strategy now provides more clarification and expands on the original proposals. It describes how DWP will sign larger, longer-term contracts with providers who will have greater freedom in how they deliver provision, enabling a more responsive service to our customers and raising quality. These top-tier providers will manage a network of delivery providers down to local level, to help the most disadvantaged customers into work and achieve the best outcome for them.

This is a major milestone in DWP’s welfare reform programme, and is a platform to take forward the vision described in David Freuds report 'Reducing Dependency, Increasing Opportunity’.

Update on Jobcentre Plus' testing of new technology

In January’s edition of in touch we reported our plans to test Voice Risk Analysis software. This will help us establish if this new technology can help us to combat benefit fraud and improve customer service standards.

The test started in our Lincoln Contact Centre and three Nottingham Jobcentres on 28 January and will run for a period of three months. Departmental Statisticians will conduct an evaluation, with the results available at the end of August.

In focus

Update on Crisis Loan service improvements

The growth in Crisis Loan applications continues to accelerate. In January and February 2008 Jobcentre Plus received over 434,000 applications - an increase of 128 per cent since April 2006.

It hasn’t proved easy to deal with this sustained and unexpected growth. Centralisation is now almost complete and this has given us the capacity and capability to handle the influx of applications. We are also feeding extra resources in to help. Staff in our contact centres are taking Crisis Loan calls and then passing the application onto the Benefit Delivery Centres for a decision. This has meant that the problems in getting through on the telephone for a Crisis Loan have almost disappeared.

But we know that what we and our customers want is a process which allows applications and decisions in one call. So, since October 2007, Lowestoft Contact Centre has been taking part in a pilot where staff support the end-to-end single call process for customers in the Kent area. The staff there have been retrained and upgraded to undertake the decision making role.

The pilot has been successful in ensuring customer service greatly improves. Just under 90 per cent of calls are answered and have decisions made within the first call. As a result this pilot has been extended to the Middlesbrough Contact Centre to deal with customers from the Glasgow District and West Midlands District - areas we have identified as having the greatest need for support.

We continue to closely monitor the number of Crisis Loan applications and to respond to that growth. Since Christmas we have also recovered the position on Community Care Grants (CCGs) and Reviews where backlogs had occurred as we responded to the increase in Crisis Loan applications. CCGs and Review numbers are now down from their peak, and we will continue to work to reduce these numbers further.

Nissan launch Local Employment Partnership recruitment drive

Stephen Timms, Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform, recently visited Nissan’s Washington, Tyne and Wear site where he signed a Local Employment agreement with the company. He toured the Qashqai model production line and signed the agreement with Nissan's HR Director Danny Griffiths.

Due to the success of the Qashqai, Nissan are introducing an extra shift, creating 800 additional jobs, a significant number of which are intended for people on benefits. To help potential recruits successfully compete for the jobs, Jobcentre Plus has sub-contracted Gateshead College Skills Academy for Automotive, Engineering, Manufacturing and Logistics to run the Nissan Routeway training scheme.

Mr Timms said, "The biggest barrier to full employment is not the shortage of jobs but the shortage of skills amongst the unemployed. Through Local Employment Partnerships (LEP) like this one at Nissan we aim to support an additional 6,000 people in the North East off benefits and into work by March 2009."

Watch the video of his visit and read other LEP news on the Jobcentre Plus website.

Stakeholder news

A round up of business information form stakeholders

Customer news

A round up of information of interest to those advising customers

Work Focused Interviews for partners of Jobseeker's Allowance customers

From 28 April the partners of Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) customers will be required to take part in a compulsory Work Focused Interview every six months. This will apply to those with a dependant child or young person in their household who is 19 or under (in full time education and receiving child benefit), who have been in receipt of JSA for at least 26 weeks.

Regular interviews will provide partners with additional opportunities to discuss the benefits of work, and allows advisers to set out the assistance available.

The initiative will help support partners to move into work, helping to lift more children out of poverty and therefore contributing towards the Government's target of eradicating child poverty.

New Prescribed Disease for Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit

On 7 April 2008, a new prescribed industrial disease, Primary Carcinoma of the Nasopharynx (PD D13), will be added to the list of diseases in the Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit (IIDB) scheme.

The jobs covered by the change will be those involving exposure to wood dust while working with wood over a period of at least ten years.

Prescribed disease D6, which covers carcinoma of the nasal cavity and sinuses, is already an established prescribed disease and the new disease complements this by covering anatomically different sites within the nose.

Claims to IIDB should be made using the claim pack BI 100PD which can be obtained from Jobcentre Plus offices or accessed online. Additionally, benefit advice and the address and telephone number of a customer's Regional Disablement Benefit office is available from the Benefit Enquiry Line (for people with disabilities) on 0800 88 22 00.

Flexible New Deal

A flexible New Deal, supported by an improved Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) regime, will offer more support to people the longer they are unemployed, with an increased focus on skills and training. Back-to-work support will no longer be determined by the jobseeker's age group, but instead by customers' individual needs.

Jobseekers will receive support from Jobcentre Plus for up to 12 months and then move onto the flexible New Deal. With this will be a tailored package of support delivered by other providers for a further 12 months, unless they find work earlier. Jobcentre Plus will remain at the heart of the system, working in partnership with specialist providers from the public, private and third sectors.

The programme will be rolled out in two phases, with Phase One being delivered from October 2009 and Phase Two from October 2010. Find out more information about the phase one areas online..

Flexible New Deal is part of the wider plans for welfare reform set out in 'Ready for work: full employment in our generation.'

In and Out of Work pilot

The In and Out of Work pilot looks at ways of ensuring that all the benefits a customer may need to claim as they move in and out of work, are processed as quickly as possible, with the maximum sharing of information to make the overall processes much more efficient and streamlined.

The pilot started last September in Coventry and Telford Contact Centres. There are five Local Authorities involved Lambeth, Liverpool, West Lothian, Sedgemoor and West Somerset, and Merthyr Tydfil, as well as the corresponding Jobcentres and Benefit Delivery centres.

Jobcentres and Benefit Delivery Centres also operate the 'into work' process. This is about ensuring all into work benefit information is gathered at a single point. This means that the payment transition for non-Jobcentre Plus administered benefits, i.e. housing benefit, council tax benefit and tax credits, is much quicker.

The pilot is in response to feedback from customers saying that taking up short term employment is made difficult by the length of time it takes to pay, adjust or stop benefits. Feedback of the pilot from both staff and customers so far has been very positive.

About in touch

in touch aims to provide you with short summaries of the latest news, progress of our modernisation programme, forthcoming changes to benefit rules, updates on performance, as well as news on important policy issues which affect our shared customers. in touch complements Touchbase, the quarterly publication from DWP, by providing a monthly focus on Jobcentre Plus related issues.

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