Current New Deal stops referrals in April 2009?
Submitted by Bungle on Wed, 29/10/2008 - 10:26am
In a meeting last week DWP stated that they will not be referring any new starts for our existing New Deal contract after April.
Has anyone else been informed of this?
The consequences of such a premature halt would be catastrophic on all manner of levels. There would be a 5 month hole in provision, possibly longer if DWP fails to get the new providers in place for October 2009. Surely this in untenable in the current economic climate?
Providers may be forced to make staff redundant only to have to recruit two months later if successful with FND tendering. More chaos!
Hi Bungle,
That does sound somewhat wacky. There have been a few instances in the past where programme delivery has basically stopped for a month or two. The funding freeze a couple of years ago and the gap before New Deal started come to mind. The more cynical might suggest that making everyone redundant would be a handy way of avoiding TUPE issues, as was rumoured with the delay on ESF results last year.
All the contract information I've seen so far states that existing contracts end in September 2009. It's possible that they want to run customers through the FND Stage 3 process before they go onto FND provision, and Gateway Stage 3 just happens to be six months long. It'll be interesting to see if any other providers have heard the same.
Haven’t heard that and logically it wouldn’t chime with a growing claimant count (leave all currently registering (bankers!) to moulder for a further 6 months?), would be a political hot potato I’d have thought.
Update - the DWP have confirmed their transition strategy. It appears referrals will stop on Friday 26th June 2009, with contracts finishing in October as FND goes live. What will providers do for cash in the months between these two, I wonder?
just come out of a meeting with JCP; all new deal activities for us to cease by 04/09/09 leaving a funding gap of at least 3 weeks but more likely 8 - 10 weeks based on past experiences, that's if we manage to pick up anything as a lowly sub contractor. Who pays for the staff and overheads in between?
That's interesting to hear. It's not exactly a new thing of course, as I mentioned earlier. It's arguable that at least this time people will know whether they're getting more work, and can use the gap to prepare for the new delivery. However, every time the DWP does this providers suffer.
There's an interesting karma issue here - providers who get shafted build extra profits into their delivery, either through charging more or delivering less. Thus problems which appear to only affect providers still end up damaging the DWP's ability to meet its objectives.
What I worry about is the starts - if starts finish in April, then wouldn't income gradually drop to zero rather than just vanishing for three weeks?