Transparency data
DWP Government Major Project Portfolio data, September 2015 (CSV)
Updated 7 July 2016
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| Project Name | Child Maintenance Group | Automatic Enrolment Programme | Universal Credit Programme | Personal Independence Payment | Fraud, Error and Debt Programme | Fit for Work Programme | New State Pension Project |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Department | DWP | DWP | DWP | DWP | DWP | DWP | DWP |
| IPA RAG rating (A Delivery Confidence Assessment of the project at a fixed point in time, using a five-point scale, Red – Amber/Red – Amber – Amber/Green – Green; definitions in the IPA Annual Report) | Amber/Green | Amber | Amber | Amber/Red | Amber/Green | Amber | Amber/Green |
| Description / Aims | The central premise of the Government’s vision is to support separated parents to work together and set up their own child maintenance arrangements. For those who are not able to do this, the Department has introduced the 2012 Child Maintenance Scheme, which significantly simplifies the calculation rules and provides a modern IT platform. | The Automatic Enrolment Programme was established to implement the Government’s workplace pension reforms. The overarching aim of the reforms is to get more people saving more for their retirement. The Programme went live in October 2012, delivering: 1) Automatic enrolment - a new duty on employers to automatically enrol their eligible workers into a qualifying workplace pension scheme; and to increase the incentive to remain saving in a pension scheme, there is a mandatory employer contribution. 2) The National Employment Savings Trust – which has a public service obligation to accept any employer who wishes to use it to meet their employer duty. It provides a good quality pension to individuals on low to moderate earnings. 3) An employer compliance regime - run by the Pension Regulator to support these measures. The implementation approach is gradual, with employers being 'staged' by size, over the period October 2012 to February 2018; and contributions to pension schemes are being gradually increased over time to provide a period of adjustment for employers and individuals, with full contributions being paid from April 2019. Once fully implemented the Department expects to see around 9 million people newly saving or saving more into a workplace pension, and an increase in pension saving of around £15 billion a year. | Universal Credit involves the merger of six separate benefits and tax credits for working age people bringing together in and out of work systems into one system to make work pay. When fully rolled out it is expected that up to 7 million households will receive Universal Credit. | The Government is committed to supporting disabled people to live independently. The Government has introduced the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) which is a more modern and dynamic benefit that assesses disabilities objectively and equally, and focuses support on those in greatest need. It has also exempted PIP from the benefit freeze over the life of the Parliament, protecting the value of the benefit. Claimants receiving PIP are also exempt from the benefit cap. | The Fraud, Error and Debt programme forms a key part of the Government’s commitment to reduce fraud and error in the welfare system. The programme aims to improve the Department’s ability to prevent, detect and respond to fraud and error, and to leverage the benefits from increased sharing of intelligence within DWP and across Government organisations. The key objectives are: • to optimise the use of HMRC’s earnings, employment and pensions data – for Universal Credit and other income-related benefits, including working with local authorities on Housing Benefit; • to have a debt and deduction recovery solution in place enabling existing cases of DWP, HMRC, local authority debt and other additional third party deductions to be recovered on migration to Universal Credit (UC); • to deliver the Single Fraud Investigation Service (SFIS) project to provide cross-government anti-fraud services; • to provide members of the public with a user–friendly and confidential service to report benefit fraud online; • to increase emphasis on prevention and improved support for detection and investigative action by delivering a business rules-based routing and management system; and • to deliver an online collection service, supporting additional debt recoveries. | In January 2013, the Government published its response to a major review of the sickness absence system in Great Britain. As part of this review the Government committed to: • introduce a new Fit for Work service in England and Wales, designed to help people in work with health conditions and to support effective management of sickness absence. Research suggests that being out of work for long periods is damaging to health and financial well-being, and the longer someone is off work the harder it is to return. • deliver enablers which allow the Scottish Government to implement Fit for Work in Scotland. • abolish the Percentage Threshold Scheme and Statutory Sick Pay record keeping obligations on employers – completed in 2014. Fit for Work provides: - Advice: free, expert and impartial work-related health advice via a website and telephone line. - Assessment: referral to an occupational health professional for employees who have been off sick or who are likely to be off sick for four weeks or more. | This project will introduce the new State Pension and end both Savings Credit and contracting-out from defined benefit pension schemes. The programme is delivering a significant simplification of the current system, by moving to a single State Pension, set above the level of the basic means tested benefit. This, together with abolition of the Savings Credit, will provide today’s savers with greater clarity about what they will receive from the state. It also reduces the number of people reliant on the basic means test. The Department is also abolishing contracting out from defined benefit pension schemes. To ensure fairness the calculation of new State Pension will recognise pre-2016 National Insurance records. This DWP led project has worked closely with HMRC to deliver the necessary changes to systems, processes and effective communications to a wide range of stakeholders (including current and future pensioners, employers, trustees and scheme providers). |
| Departmental commentary on actions planned or taken on the IPA RAG rating. | The Infrastructure Projects Authority completed a review in August 2015 and strongly endorsed extending the programme to December 2016. The IPA will revisit the programme in Summer 2016 to assess the programme, including the management of the key delivery risks and whether the programme remains on track for its formal programme closure in December 2016. | Programme implementation has been successful, with over 5.8 million people automatically enrolled by over 79,000 employers, high levels of compliance amongst employers and opt-out rates amongst individuals remaining low at around 10%. The Programme was positively assessed by The National Audit Office in November 2015, while noting the challenge of supporting the very large volumes of small and micro employers to meet their duties from January 2016 onwards. In preparation for this, the Programme delivered a significant piece of work over Autumn 2015 to tailor its communications for smaller employers. This included a refreshed TPR website, revised employer guidance, an on-line tool to assess the eligibility of workers, and a national communications campaign to help raise awareness. | The delivery confidence assessment awarded at the Infrastructure Projects Authority (and associated Major Projects Review Group) Review in October 2015 reflected the significant progress the Programme has made since the previous rating given in March 2014. In awarding an Amber delivery confidence assessment, the IPA acknowledged that the Universal Credit Programme: • has made considerable progress; • has strong leadership in place; • is integrated with partners with stakeholders actively engaged (with plans in place to strengthen further); • has a single agreed end-to-end delivery plan; • is rolling out at pace Universal Credit nationally to single unemployed claimants across GB, and • is demonstrating evidence of positive Labour Market effects. The Programme has implemented all recommendations from earlier IPA reviews. The latest IPA recommendations have been accepted by the Programme, and action owners have been assigned and implementation action plans drawn up. All recommendations and action plans will be subject to regular monitoring and independent scrutiny to ensure all necessary action is being taken to address and close the recommendations at the earliest opportunity. | The Programme had an IPA review in October 2015, which recognised the significant progress made in the resolution of early operational issues which had caused backlogs in 2013-2014. PIP statistics published December 2015 showed that average actual clearance times were at 11 weeks for new claims, or 6 days for terminally ill cases. The implementation of PIP remains a challenging reform programme that requires continuous proactive analysis and management of performance, with active intervention where necessary to mitigate the level of inherent risk. | The Programme had an IPA review in February 2016 which recognised that the Programme operates as an effective delivery vehicle for a range of initiatives; has a good track record of transitioning deliverables into live, ensuring realisation of benefits; and robustly evaluates potential future initiatives. Responding to the recommendations, the programme is: • reviewing the Programmes future alignment and composition, ensuring future activities are aligned to support the Department’s 2020 vision. • reviewing the membership and operation of the Programme Board; and • ensuring alignment between FED Programme initiatives and the UC Programme, via formal representation and governance routes. | • The Fit for Work service was launched in December 2014, initially with introduction of the advice service, and subsequently, from March 2015, referral to an assessment by an occupational health professional. Fit for Work Scotland also launched from December 2014. • All GPs across GB can now refer their patients for an assessment by an occupational health professional. From 8 September 2015, the Service has also been extended to employers in England and Wales. • The programme has implemented an Independent Assessment Assurance Provider that provides clinical and non-clinical audit in England and Wales, and to gather customer satisfaction data across Great Britain from GPs and employers. • The number of individuals currently using the service is below the forecasted volumes. DWP and the Fit for Work supplier Health Management Limited are working closely to identify the causes and implement solutions to increase volumes. | Following the last IPA review, the Programme Board has reviewed the current and future suite of external communications to ensure their clarity, fitness for purpose and alignment with customer insight. This has been used to refine the next phase of the projects communications campaign, which started in early 2016, and the future communications strategy which will continue beyond April 2016. The Programme is also continuing to develop the criteria and management information to complete the handover to business as usual by summer 2016. |
| Project - Start Date (Latest approved start date) | 01/08/2009 | 01/05/2007 | 17/11/2011 | 31/10/2011 | 02/04/2012 | 27/02/2013 | 27/02/2012 |
| Project - End Date (Latest approved end date) | 31/12/2016 | 30/11/2018 | 30/04/2020 | 30/04/2018 | 31/03/2017 | 31/03/2015 | 30/06/2016 |
| Departmental narrative on schedule, including any deviation from planned schedule (if necessary) | Phase 1 of the programme is complete. This introduced the new IT system, a mandatory gateway to encourage family based arrangements, and where these arrangements cannot be made, then application to the statutory 2012 scheme. Phase 2 introduced client charging and triggered the start of proactive closure of old ‘Child Support Agency’ cases and successfully went live between 30 June 2014 and 11 August 2014. The programme is closing existing cases in a phased and careful way, giving parents the option to make their own arrangements or to transfer where appropriate to the new system without disrupting existing maintenance payments. Case Closure of Segments 1-5 (around 900,000 cases) remains on track to complete by late 2017. Case Closure for Arrears Only cases (around 600,000 cases) is planned to start from mid 2017 and complete in early 2019. This will enable the “retirement” of the previous scheme IT systems. | The Programme went live on time. The implementation approach has been designed to accommodate the significant increase in volumes over the 2015-2018 period. The Programme is on track to deliver to timetable. | Delivery remains on track. HMT have approved the Universal Credit Outline Business Case. National Rollout of Universal Credit to single unemployed claimants, in 712 Jobcentres and 380 Local Authorities, completed as planned in April 2016. UC is now available across the whole of Great Britain. A cohort analysis of the first 8,000 people to claim Universal Credit against a comparator for Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) shows that Universal Credit claimants spend 10 hours more per week looking for work, are 8% more likely to be in work and, on average, work 12 days longer than people on JSA. Testing of the digitally enabled service for all Universal Credit claimants continues to expand and is now in eight jobcentres The full service began rolling out nationally from May 2016. From May 2016, the full service will be delivered in phases initially at 5 jobcentres per month, then scaled up to 50 jobcentres a month in 2017. As each jobcentre rolls out, all new claims will be to Universal Credit, and it will no longer be possible, in that location, to make a new claim to JSA, Employment Support Allowance, Income Support, Housing Benefit or Tax Credits. By the middle of 2018 this transition will be complete and it will no longer be possible to make a claim for legacy benefits or Tax Credits anywhere in Great Britain. Finally, the migration of claimants in receipt of legacy benefits on a national scale will begin in 2018 with Universal Credit completing by May 2021. | A controlled start to reassessing existing DLA cases commenced 13 July 2015, utilising a test and learn approach. In October 2015, the programme commenced the full roll out by postcode, inviting current DLA working age recipients to claim PIP. | The programme has made good progress in the following areas: • SFIS successfully completed roll-out in March 16 as planned. • the first interface enabling a debt and deduction recovery solution for DWP, HMRC and local authorities debt to be recovered on migration to UC was delivered in December 2015. Subsequent interfaces are in the final stages of development / readiness for implementation in Summer 16. The period has also seen the delivery of a number of solutions into Public Beta: • Wider Use of Real Time Information (WURTi) has successfully deployed and tested its service within a small number of Pension Centres, providing access to RTi data. Roll-out commenced April 2016. Carers Allowance testing commenced May 16 with Employment Support Allowance following in June. The Project is planning further deployment of the service for Housing Benefit, Jobseeker’s Allowance, and Income Support. • Delivery of an online service for customers to report benefit fraud on line will move into Public Beta in July. | The Fit for Work programme was formally closed on 23 May 2016 and has been handed over to business as usual. | The new State Pension officially went live at the end of December 2015 with the first advance claims taken and processed, and due for payment in April 2016. The first new claims are being supported by “live proving” to ensure the complex calculations and the corresponding responses to customers are correct. HMRC have made the necessary changes to reflect the end of contracting out from April 2016. |
| 2015/16 Budget (£million) | £122.20 | £117.50 | £585.49 | £365.81 | £152.00 | £15.60 | £44.82 |
| 2015/16 Forecast (£million) | £122.20 | £100.96 | £429.33 | £351.05 | £124.05 | £14.07 | £30.00 |
| Variance Budget / Forecast %age | Budget variance less than 5%. | -14.08% | -26.67% | Budget variance less than 5%. | -18.39% | -9.82% | -33.07% |
| Total budgeted whole life costs (£million) (including Non-government costs) | £955.84 | £995.40 | £15,844.02 | £3,603.04 | £834.00 | £276.36 | £174.11 |
| Departmental Narrative on Budget / Forecast variance for 2015/16 where more than +/- 5% | Budget variance less than 5%. | The proportion of employers complying has been higher than expected so the costs of enforcing compliance have been lower than budgeted. | Forecast spend in 2015-16 is below budget primarily due to the economic impact of lower unemployment, coupled with lower estimates of IT costs to support the national expansion of Universal Credit to single unemployed claimants and the development of the Digital Service. | Budget variance less than 5%. | The overall reduction in forecast against budget is largely attributable to changes in the scope and timing of some initiatives, together with some reductions in the level of expenditure incurred. | The variance is associated with lower than anticipated output-related costs, which were revised following analysis of service volumes in the initial stages of live running. | The variance reflects reductions in HMRC business costs following updated planning information. |
| Departmental Narrative on Budgeted Whole Life Costs | This Business Case was refreshed in late Summer 2015 to reflect the experience of live running. Greater numbers of clients are reaching agreements between themselves through Family Based Arrangements than originally assumed, and more clients who have applied to the 2012 scheme are making payments between themselves using the Direct Pay service instead of using the Collect and Pay Service. This has led to a reduced staff requirement and lower running costs. In addition, the programme has accelerated Case Closure since the previous business case. | The whole life costs cover the period from 2007-08 when the Programme started through to 2017-18, the business case period (as per the business case at September 2012). The funding covers: the set up and running costs of NEST (through a repayable loan); the set-up and running costs of the compliance regime within TPR; the communications costs for raising awareness through a series of campaigns; and the costs associated with running the Programme Management Office. | The budgeted whole life cost figure reflects the Strategic Outline Business Case as approved by HMT in September 2014 and excluded the impact of savings expected to be delivered by the Programme. An updated Outline Business Case was approved in December 2015 and reflects the substantial changes that have taken place in the intervening period. | New claims volumes are higher than originally forecast which has resulted in an increase in whole life costs. In order to test assumptions around DLA reassessment cases, the programme have undertaken a controlled start of Full PIP Rollout and are currently reviewing the findings. The costs cover both investment and operating costs (including IT systems, Operational and Programme costs) over the business case period (i.e. to 2021-22 inclusive). Costs will be updated to reflect learning from the controlled start of reassessment of DLA claims. | The whole life costs include both the implementation costs of the Programme (including a number of individual Projects that have been delivered to date) together with the on-going operating costs of projects within the Fraud, Error & Debt Programme including the costs of operating the Single Fraud Investigation Service. | The budgeted whole life cost of £276m reflects the business case as at July 2015 and largely covers on-going supplier costs to deliver the Fit for Work Service in England and Wales, and costs to support the provision of the Service in Scotland. The budgeted whole life costs have reduced as they take account of the set up and delivery costs in the finalised contract with the supplier in England and Wales. | The budgeted whole life costs were set in December 2014 and have seen material reductions in requirements for both DWP IT, and other costs and HMRC IT and Operational costs. |
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