More than half of the job centers reduce support to people claiming a universal credit due to a shortage of work coaches, according to a report by the public spending dog.
The national audit office said that the reasons for discounts included a lack of funding and challenges in recruiting and maintaining staff.
It comes then that the number of applicants classified as demanding support increased from 2.6 million to 3 million in the space of a year.
The government said that it was redeploying 1,000 work coaches to help, but a charitable organization campaigning to end poverty said that the shortage compromised the plans announced in the Chancellor’s spring declaration to make more people with disabilities work.
Iain Porter, senior policy advisor at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said that the government’s promise to stimulate employment had been used to “justify the greatest reductions in recent memory disability services”.
“The government has to explain it urgently how it plans to support people with disabilities at work when these work coach shortages remain,” he said.
Published on Monday, the report said that there were 2,100 less work coaches – who can offer advice and return applicants for jobs – employed by the Labor and Pensions Department (DWP) in England, Wales and Scotland only expected.
He said that around 57% of employment centers had used flexibilities authorized by the DWP to reduce support for applicants when cases are too high between September 2023 and November 2024.
Changes in income rules meant that additional 400,000 people were qualified for such support during the year to October.
The number of applicants who travel to work each month has also dropped in the past two years.
In the Printemps Declaration, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said that “broken” services system would save around 4.8 billion pounds sterling by the end of the decade, and 1 billion sterling pounds would be invested “to provide personalized employment support guaranteed to help people at work”.
The DWP said that it redesigned staff to help sick and disabled people at work, and modernized job centers with new digital tools.
A spokesperson said: “Our employment centers are full of brilliant work coaches – but they are retained by a system that is too focused on checking boxes and monitoring the advantages instead of truly supporting people at work.
“This is why we are rebuilding 1,000 work coaches to help provide intensive employment support for sick and disabled people, modernization of employment centers with new digital tools and improving access to free work coaches while we bring the network with the National Carrières Service.”
