Designing and delivering employment support

This report examines how employment support for people out of work due to ill health or disability in England could be redesigned to be more effective. It analyses why previous, largely centralised approaches have failed to reduce health‑related economic inactivity, including challenges in policy design and engagement with affected individuals. The report explores the potential benefits and risks of devolving employment support to sub‑national governments and outlines eight recommendations for a renewed local approach to employment support.

Recommendations

1. Central government should give strategic authorities responsibility for the design and delivery of local employment support.
2. Strategic authorities should be given more flexible, multi-year funding for employment support through the integrated settlement.
3. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and strategic authorities should agree a clear outcomes framework linked to the integrated settlement. 
4. Central government should support and adequately resource strategic authorities to build capability to design, commission and evaluate locally delivered employment support. 
5. DWP should support and co-ordinate evaluation of devolved employment support to ensure learning from local innovation is captured and shared.
6. Strategic authorities should explore a ‘single front door’ approach to improve engagement with employment support.
7. The economic inactivity trailblazers should prioritise understanding how to improve engagement with employment support, by helping to address gaps in the evidence for how to reach people out of work due to ill health who are further away from the labour market.
8. Government should embrace the inevitable patchwork of national and devolved provision but have clear principles to help shape it, including in any areas where it intends to continue taking a centralised approach.