JCP Support Contract winners published

The list of Support Contract winners is now available in a particularly well hidden area of the DWP website. The full list follows in a handy sortable table and pdf (under Crown copyright).

CPA No	Contract Package Area	Successful Organisation
24	London (Central London; Lambeth, Southwark and Wandsworth; City & East London; North & North East London; South London and West London)	A4e
23	West Yorkshire	A4e
22	Cumbria & Lancashire	JHP Group
21	Cheshire, Halton & Warrington; Merseyside	Reed in Partnership
20	Glasgow	Reed in Partnership
19	Highlands, Islands Clyde Coast & Grampian. Forth Valley, Fife & Tayside	JHP Group
18	Northumbria, South Tyne & Wear Valley	ESG
17	Essex; Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire	Seetec
16	Hampshire & Isle of Wight; Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire	A4e
15	West of England; Somerset & Dorset; Gloucestershire, Wiltshire & Swindon	Pinnacle People
14	Surrey and Sussex; Kent	Pinnacle People
13	Cambridgeshire & Suffolk; Lincolnshire and Rutland; Norfolk	TNG
12	South Yorkshire; Derbyshire	A4e
11	South Wales Valleys; South West Wales	Capital Engineering Group Holdings
10	North and Mid Wales; South East Wales	A4e
9	Nottinghamshire	Ingeus
8	Leicestershire & Northamptonshire	Ingeus
7	North East Yorkshire and the Humber; Tees Valley	Pertemps People Development Group
6	Edinburgh, Lothian and Borders; Lanarkshire and East Dunbartonshire; Ayrshire, Dumfries, Galloway and Inverclyde.	JHP Group
5	Greater Manchester Central; Greater Manchester East and West	Standguide
4	Coventry and Warwickshire; The Marches; Staffordshire	JHP Group
3	Devon and Cornwall	Working Links
2	Black Country	A4e
1	Birmingham and Solihull	Ingeus

Support Contracts have a relatively low budget*, unsurprisingly as the contracts they replace (e.g. Programme Centres) weren't that big either. This makes the presence of so many big providers on the list interesting. While A4e have always delivered the full spectrum, some of the larger providers (Ingeus, Reed, Working Links) have traditionally shied away from smaller contracts with borderline profitability. It could be argued that consolidating the dozens of previous contracts and offering a five year contract length improve the potential profitability, and not having an outcome fee massively reduces risk. There's also the possibility that providers who didn't perform well in FND phase 1 have been pushed into bidding for whatever's out there.

As a note of caution, this type of contract does not figure in the Conservatives' plans, but then neither does any other contract currently being delivered. In particular, the Work Programme would remove the JCP adviser-led stage of Flexible New Deal. The contract length is five years extendible to seven, and cutting the contracts early would likely be a costly business.

* - The indicative budget for each contract is in Annex 9 of the contract specification, which has not been published. The countrywide figures should pop up in the wider DWP budget reports at some point. It appears that the DWP are still not publishing contract values and targets, although Conservative proposals to publish details of all contracts over £25,000 may end this practice.