DWP Spending On IT Contractors Rockets Amid Universal Credit Delays

Spending on external IT contractors by the DWP has rocketed to £8m every month in a desperate attempt to get the heavily delayed Universal Credit scheme back on track. Monthly workforce figures published by the DWP show that departmental spending on “specialist contractors” has more than doubled in just eight months, reaching £8,272,817 in April this year. In just over two years the number of specialist contractors working for the DWP has risen from below a hundred in March 2014 to a record high of 556 this April, the most recent month for which data is available – with the cost to the taxpayer increasing almost six-fold. Read more on the Sentinel News website.

The People Dumped In “Temporary” Housing For More Than A Decade

A survey of more than a hundred local authorities has found that many councils are housing people in stopgap accommodation for years on end. The survey, carried out for the DWP, asked councils for the maximum period that claimants are being placed in temporary housing. 114 councils responded to the survey. Of these, a third said they had claimants who had been in temporary housing for more than a year. Less than 40 percent of councils did not have anyone in temporary housing for more than a year, while a further 29 percent didn’t know what the maximum local period in temporary housing was. 3 percent said they had had people in temporary accommodation for 10 years or more. Read more on the Sentinel News website.