Citizens Advice response to the Work and Pensions Select Committee inquiry Get Britain Working: Reforming Jobcentres
Citizens Advice provides free, confidential and independent advice to help people overcome their problems. In 2023-24, we gave advice to 2.7 million people: 1.8 million people over the phone, 760,000 by email, and 168,000 through web chat. We helped over 700,000 people with issues related to benefits. 48% of the people we help are disabled, have a long term health condition or both.
The geographic range of this response covers England and Wales.
Our response to this consultation is informed by:
Research with frontline advisers across the network of our local offices in England and Wales. We explored advisers’ experiences of supporting people with Universal Credit (UC), through:
Interviews with 10 advisers, conducted between September and December 2023
A survey of 256 advisers in October 2024.
Interviews with 15 UC claimants from across England, conducted between March and August 2024, recruited through local Citizens Advice offices.
Visits to 2 Jobcentres in England, where we observed appointments and spoke informally with Jobcentre staff.
Evidence forms submitted by advisers about issues the people they help face concerning UC and work coaches.
Citizens Advice caseload data.
Our response is based on the experience of the people coming to us for help, our advisers who support them, and the evidence we see every day. We have answered only those questions to which we feel our expertise is relevant. There is a summary below, or you can access the full response using the link at the top of the page.
Summary
Our research has found that the Jobcentre is too focused on monitoring compliance with claimant commitments, which undermines trust and creates a fear of sanctions. Work coaches’ ability to provide employment support is further undermined by their high workloads, short appointment times and focus on compliance.
A key factor in the effectiveness of work coach support is the quality of relationships they are able to build with claimants and there is a great deal of variation in these relationships. Some work coaches use empathy, encouragement and friendliness to establish trust and collaboration, while others are more critical and even hostile. Consistency of relationships is key - those who saw the same work coach over a sustained period of time tended to feel more supported than those who saw multiple work coaches.
Employment support is limited as appointments are often administrative and impersonal with little tailored advice. Claimants are too often encouraged to apply for jobs that are inappropriate or poor quality which they find demotivating. Specialist employment support emphasising trust and respect is needed, alongside better signposting to external support services.
Work coaches should provide tailored, sensitive support to claimants who are older, have health conditions, have experienced domestic abuse and/or are facing hardship. This should include providing reasonable accommodations for appointments and ensuring job recommendations are appropriate. Although discrimination appears to be relatively rare, stronger safeguarding is needed to prevent, identify and address discrimination against claimants.
UC claimants often perceive the Jobcentre as a place where they will be strictly monitored but offered comparatively little support in return. Claimants told us they often find the Jobcentre intimidating and unwelcoming. Privacy within the Jobcentre was also a key concern for many claimants.
The strength of the connections between Jobcentres and external partners varies by location. DWP should ensure that Relationship Managers within Jobcentres consistently work with advice providers to increase two-way communication.
We haven’t included policy recommendations in our response, but for our full list of recommendations please see our report here. We are also in the process of writing a more in-depth proposal on how a reformed Jobcentre could be organised, developing the ideas presented here. We will share this proposal in due course. In this response we focus on current Jobcentre practice.
The response was authored by Kate Harrison, based on research conducted by Kate and Jagna Olejniczak