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Register for an event to give potential delivery partners the opportunity to understand DWP’s requirements to support people to claim Universal Credit.

DWP currently provides grant funding to support people to make and maintain their Universal Credit (UC) claim up until their first correct UC payment.

DWP is looking at how best to fulfil these requirements in the future by considering our strategy and the capability of the marketplace.

The requirements have not yet been finalised, and DWP is hosting an industry pre-market engagement event to give potential delivery partners the opportunity to better understand DWP’s objectives and challenges, and for DWP to gain insight from the market about potential ways forward.

About the Department for Work and Pensions

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions and child maintenance policy. As the UK’s biggest public service department, it administers a range of working age, pension age, disability and ill-health benefits to over 20 million claimants and customers.

DWP priorities include:

• running an effective welfare system that enables people to achieve financial independence by providing assistance aimed at supporting them into employment
• creating a fair and affordable welfare system which improves the life chances of citizens
• delivering outstanding services to our customers and claimants
• delivering efficiently: transforming the way we deliver our services to reduce costs and increase efficiency

DWP currently provides grant funding to organisations to support people to make and maintain their Universal Credit (UC) claim up until their first correct UC payment. For example, support to:

• set up an email address
• work through claimant to-do’s
• access the UC phone service to make a claim
• access DWP home visiting support
• help verify identity
• help provide additional evidence
• help access adaptations such as direct payments to landlords and conditionality easements
• apply for advances and help to access other financial support
• help prepare for first monthly payment
• signpost out to other provision and support

Future strategy

This event is aimed at how best to fulfil these requirements in the future by considering our strategy and the capability of the marketplace.

The requirements have not yet been finalised, and DWP is hosting an industry pre-market engagement event to give potential delivery partners the opportunity to better understand DWP’s objectives and challenges, and for DWP to gain insight from the market about potential ways forward.

We want to engage with all potential delivery partners (commercial and not for profit) to establish interest and further understand how the support could be delivered, including an indication of realistic timescales for implementation, transition and training, as well as indicative costs.

Some of the key considerations for delivery may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• the delivery model e.g. single national delivery, lot-based regional delivery, lot-based channel delivery
• the channels for support e.g. telephony, digital, face-to-face
• a grant versus commercial contract
• a 2-year delivery agreement

At this stage it is not confirmed if DWP require a single or multiple delivery partners to deliver the different channels for support, however we would welcome and encourage feedback from potential delivery partners regarding partnership working or consortiums and building relationships with other organisations to provide wrap around support where necessary.

The event will be held virtually over MS Teams and hosted by Tech UK on Thursday 19 May at 10am and will last no longer than 90 minutes.

There will be an introduction from the Universal Credit Programme, providing a high-level overview of the requirement. Following the introduction, there will be an opportunity for suppliers to ask any questions.

After the event, suppliers will be invited to complete a questionnaire, providing supporting information on a range of areas that will support DWP’s strategy. The supplier responses will be reviewed and where appropriate, suppliers may be invited to a 1-2-1 session to explore ideas and discuss further.

Please note that due to technical capacity constraints suppliers will be limited to a maximum of 2 representatives.

Registration is for this pre-market engagement event only. This is not a Contract Notice or an invitation to tender for a contract opportunity. In the event that DWP wishes to progress with any procurement activity, a separate Contract Notice will be advertised on Contracts Finder and Find a Tender (FTS) websites.

Care will be taken not to provide any individual organisation or organisations with a competitive advantage at any stage in the pre-market engagement process.