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Evaluation of the Working Neighbourhoods Pilot
Final report

Dewson S, Casebourne J, Darlow A, Bickerstaffe T, Fletcher D R, Gore T, Krishnan S
Research Report DWPRR 411, Department for Work and Pensions, February 2007

a study commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions

This report presents the findings from the evaluation of the Working Neighbourhoods Pilot (WNP). The WNP was established in April 2004 to test new approaches to offering intensive support to help people to find and remain in work.

The pilot was targeted towards people who are without work, including claimants of Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), Income Support (IS), Incapacity Benefit (IB), partners of claimants and workless non-claimants. The pilots, which have operated in 12 sites in England, Scotland and Wales, were selected because of very high levels of worklessness and deprivation, and have been delivered by a combination of Jobcentre Plus and private Employment Zone (EZ) contractors (WNP/EZ). Essentially, the pilots have tested very local approaches to overcoming worklessness: delivery organisations, Jobcentre Plus and WNP/EZ providers were charged with working within the framework of Local Strategic Partnerships to determine how best to overcome barriers to work, and move local people into jobs.

Aims of the research

This evaluation aimed to test:

• the extent to which a programme of local level intensive work-focused action (the WNP), in co-operation with local partners, is effective in addressing long-standing barriers to work experienced by residents of deprived areas
• the extent to which the pilot increases the number of individuals moving in to work, and as far as possible, the extent to which it decreases the overall workless rate within the pilot areas.

Method of approach

The evaluation was undertaken through a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods and comprised four main components:

• A literature review which explored the concept of worklessness, at the level of the individual and the community.
• A comprehensive analysis of secondary and administrative data, undertaken in-house by DWP analysts, involving statistical profiling of WNP sites, and analyses of employment and unemployment statistics, benefit on- and off-flow data, and records from the Work and Pensions Longitudinal Survey (WPLS) database.
• Detailed case study work with stakeholders in the pilot and comparison areas, providing baseline information on the areas’ social and economic characteristics, and updates in two further waves of fieldwork on the progress of the pilots and their impact on area changes during the lifetime of the pilot.
• An eligible residents survey (ERS) involving face-to-face interviews with approximately 1,200 residents across the 12 pilot sites in two waves. The surveys sought to explore attitudes and motivations towards work, and importantly, to determine people’s experiences of the pilots. The surveys were supplemented by approximately 40 in-depth interviews at each wave to explore issues around the ‘culture of worklessness’ in more detail.

Key findings

Characteristics of the pilot sites

• Analysis of the 2001 Census of Population shows that the pilot sites were noticeably different to the ‘norm’.
• Unemployment levels were up to three times higher than national levels in each of the pilot sites and economic inactivity was at least ten percentage points above the average in almost all the WNP areas. Over half of the pilot sites had economic inactivity rates of over 50 per cent.
• Sickness and disability is also much higher in the pilot sites than nationally and at least one in ten people in most of the pilot areas were unable to work because of health problems. Many more people in the WNP areas were also inactive because of caring responsibilities when compared to national averages.
• Many of the pilot sites have relatively high numbers of households headed by a single person compared to national figures. Rates of lone parenthood are also greater in many of the WNP areas compared to the rest of the country.
• Most residents in WNP areas live in rented accommodation, and most properties are flats or terraced houses. Rates of owner occupation in the pilot sites are markedly lower than national figures.
• In terms of human capital, over half of all residents in most of the WNP areas have no qualifications at all, compared to approximately one-third of the population nationally.

Pilot customers

During the survey of eligible residents, WNP participants and non-participants provided more information on the barriers they thought local people faced when looking for work. These centred on the following four themes:

• Labour market factors – including a lack of suitable jobs, or jobs that were poorly paid (43 per cent of participants and non-participants thought this was the case).
• Individual barriers or poor human capital – 38 per cent of residents thought that local people lacked the qualifications or skills necessary for the jobs available.
• Motivation – there was a fairly widespread belief that local people did not want to work (28 per cent of residents thought motivation was a problem).
• Local infrastructure – over 20 per cent of residents believed that poor childcare facilities and poor transport were significant barriers to employment in the local area.

Amongst residents who were looking for work, a similar range of barriers to employment were identified: 30 per cent of jobseekers in the local area said they had few or no qualifications, 30 per cent thought there was a lack of suitable jobs in the local area, 30 per cent did not have transport to get to work, 28 per cent had no recent work experience, and 22 per cent thought that the wages on offer locally were too low.

The case study research with local stakeholders also identified a number of demand-side factors that acted as barriers to work to local residents. A decline in traditional industries in many of the pilot sites had resulted in significant shifts from manufacturing to service sector jobs, and a commensurate mismatch between the skills held and the skills necessary for the jobs available locally. Added to this, the jobs that were available locally were often low paid, and many were located on peripheral industrial estates which are difficult to reach by public transport. Local employers are often small and want recruits who are immediately employable and few employers have the time or inclination to take on people who have been out of the labour market for any length of time. There is also some anecdotal evidence to suggest that employers discriminate against recruits from some of the pilot areas because of where they live, ie there may be an element of postcode discrimination in operation.

Policy response

Three main models of WNP delivery have been identified:

• The distributed model, whereby pilots have run primarily from a dedicated community office where routine work-focused interviews (WFIs), adviser meetings and action planning has taken place. All other provision has been carried out off-site, usually by other providers.
• The hub and spoke model, which is characterised by the WNP office acting as a local community hub, offering a wide range of activities and services to pilot customers and others living in the local area. Additional provision was often available in-house.
• The ‘Jobcentre in the community’ model which has seen the pilot established in an outreach location, but often offering the most basic of services. Additional provision has usually been available off-site.

Three models of provision fall from these delivery models:

• The holistic approach which underpins the hub and spoke model, and to a slightly lesser degree the distributed model. This model offers a comprehensive service to identify all the main barriers to work and offers a significant range of provision and support to meet customer needs and overcome barriers.
• The work-focused approach which characterises the Jobcentre in the community model. The emphasis in these pilots has been work-first with any additional provision geared to addressing customers’ immediate barriers to labour market participation.
• The work-focused plus approach, often displayed by pilots adopting the distributed model of delivery, is a hybrid of the holistic and work-focused approaches. Barriers are identified and addressed but with a greater, and speedier emphasis on moving customers into work.

There have been some excellent examples of effective internal management across the pilots, regardless of whether they have been led by WNP/EZ contractors or Jobcentre Plus. In these cases, common features of the management style have been a strong personal commitment to the success of the initiative, a ‘hands-on’ approach; for example, getting involved and building the necessary partnerships, ensuring sound project management systems and facilitating a strong teamwork ethos.

The nature of the WNP, in terms of often difficult and varied caseloads and the relatively high levels of autonomy required in order to meet the diverse needs of customers, has placed considerable demands on Personal Advisers. Such demands have underlined the importance of recruiting advisers with the necessary experience and skills. The skill sets and personalities of advisers were seen by those working in the Working Neighbourhoods Pilots as more important than their formal qualifications, professional background or experience; although having some past experience of the advisory role, or previous experience of working in the local community, can make advisers particularly effective at engaging customers.

Effective working partnerships have been particularly important to the pilots for a number of reasons:

• partners have been used as a source of customer referrals
• partners have provided services to customers
• partners have supplied premises for WNP activities
• partners have offered strategic direction to WNP activities.

Pilots have experienced differential degrees of success in relation to partnership working. Where good community links existed prior to the pilot, there was a greater opportunity to take advantage of these established networks. Other pilots have had to start to build effective partnerships where none have existed before. In general though, the time and effort dedicated to the engagement of community partners by pilot staff has been viewed as a positive and valid activity in many pilot areas. This has been particularly the case in those pilots operating within the ‘distributed’ and ‘hub and spoke’ models of delivery, suggesting that these approaches have been the most effective in engaging key community groups.

Pilot activities

Pilots have tested a number of engagement techniques to draw in customers, and particularly non-traditional customers, and most pilots have employed some sort of outreach mechanism to do so. Engagement methods have included the distribution of flyers and leaflets to local residents, direct mail to named claimants, face-to-face contact with potential customers including door-knocking, the provision of financial incentives, and working through existing community groups and providers. No one engagement method stands out as being particularly effective, and what is clear is that engagement takes time and investment, especially with the specific target customer groups for WNP.

The majority of participants on WNP have been JSA customers (60 per cent) and this pattern has not changed significantly over the two-year pilot period. Twenty-seven per cent of pilot customers were IS claimants with a further ten per cent coming from the IB customer group.

One of the key features of the WNP has been the one-to-one relationship between the Personal Adviser and the customer, including the WFI. These have been well received by customers with over three-quarters of people saying that they had found these meetings useful. A number of people actually requested more WFIs, saying they needed more help to find work.

There has been considerable variability in the ability of pilots to spend Community FDF and to procure new services and provision. WNP/EZ pilots committed a large amount of Community FDF in the first year, with a high proportion being spent on the refurbishment of premises. Jobcentre Plus pilots were slower to start spending Community FDF but seem to have done so more in the second year of the pilot. The types of initiatives that have been funded through Community FDF fall into three broad areas:

• Investment in the physical infrastructure for community facilities; for example, refurbishments of existing community facilities, and refurbishment of WNP premises.
• Investment in projects to build social capital within the pilot area.
• Projects to provide support or advice and broader training or employability related projects.

Retention payments were a key feature of the pilots and were targeted at customers who moved into, and remained in, work after previously receiving benefits. Payments have been widely used by advisers as a means of encouraging participants to enter work. They appear to have been useful in overcoming some of the early barriers to job retention, such as paying off debts, and buying clothes and tools etc.

The extent to which retention payments have been used in conjunction with other forms of in-work support has varied across the pilots. However, most pilots have adopted a ‘hands off’ approach to in-work support and have relied mainly on retention payments to encourage people to stay in work.

Few pilots have been actively engaging employers as part of WNP, which has been seen by some pilot managers to have been a wasted opportunity. WNP/EZ pilots were more likely to have had specific employer engagement staff working with companies to secure vacancies for WNP customers than Jobcentre Plus pilots.

Outcomes and impact

Some of the gains most commonly recalled by WNP participants relate to:

• soft outcomes, such as gains in self-confidence and motivation
• job search techniques
• jobs.

Overall, 35 per cent of all WNP participants had moved into employment in the two years up to April 2006. Fifty-five per cent of all those who had started employment had been in work for at least 13 weeks and had claimed their first retention payment, whilst 37 per cent had been in work for 26 weeks or more and received the full back to work bonus. Interestingly, IS and IB customers, whilst less likely overall to have found employment than their JSA counterparts, were more likely to have stayed in work for longer. No significant differences were identified in relation to job entry rates according to whether pilots were being run by WNP/EZ contractors or Jobcentre Plus.

However, DWP estimates indicate that the job entry rate in pilot sites is some 13 percentage points higher than in the comparison sites. Using data from Jobcentre Plus programmes, data from the WPLS, and data from Jobcentre Plus’ Labour Market System, it appears that pilot sites had a job entry rate of 43 per cent compared to 30 per cent in the comparison areas. These figures suggest that by participating in the Pilot, WNP customers have been more successful in finding work than they would have been otherwise.

Area outcomes have been much harder to establish in the WNP sites. A commonly held view by many pilot staff and representatives of community groups was that any measurable impact on the wider ‘culture of worklessness’, would be negligible after just two years of activity. The main areas where some impact, over and above individual outcomes has been felt, included:

• partnership working – in some areas, there is clear evidence that partnership working has been enhanced over time as a result of the pilot
• capital investment – pilots that have invested in the acquisition and refurbishment of physical assets will continue to benefit local people living in the pilot areas for some time to come
• improved knowledge and understanding of local areas – some of the approaches tested out through WNP have gone on to inform the design of new initiatives and policy responses.

Conclusions and lessons for policy

The Working Neighbourhoods Pilot has succeeded in getting a significant number of people into work, and has a number of strengths that relate to the following:

• The flexibility of the Pilot – advisers have been able to take flexible, responsive approaches to working with customers to address entrenched barriers to labour market participation.
• The engagement of key local players – working in partnership has brought key benefits including a greater understanding of the worklessness ‘problem’ and mobilising a wide range of organisations and providers to meet the needs of customer groups.
• Putting in place a wide range of provision to meet customer needs – using Community FDF monies to secure provision, particularly for customers normally outside of the remit of mainstream Jobcentre Plus services.
• Testing different customer engagement strategies.
• The quality of staff teams – many pilots have benefited from enthusiastic, committed and effective managers and advisers.

A number of weaknesses have also been identified:

• pilot penetration amongst non-traditional customer groups has remained fairly low
• a lack of innovation and experimentation in relation to engagement methods, and new provision
• inadequate staffing levels in some pilot areas
• the relatively short duration of the pilot
• a lack of attention to demand-side measures to overcome worklessness.

The main lessons learned from the Working Neighbourhoods Pilot fall from these conclusions and include the following:

• The need to allow sufficient time for initiatives to bed-in, and to bring about change.
• The importance of having the right management and staff teams in place to deliver the initiative.
• To provide a full range of support measures for customers to address their barriers to work. In addition, attention should be made to demand-side measures when designing policy interventions.
• Testing different ways of engaging non-traditional customer groups, particularly outreach methods, whilst recognising the time it takes to succeed with these customers.
• The critical role played by partners in programme strategy and delivery.

Evaluation of the Working Neighbourhoods Pilot: Final report, Dewson S, Casebourne J, Darlow A, Bickerstaffe T, Fletcher D R, Gore T, Krishnan S. Research Report DWPRR 411, Department for Work and Pensions, 2007.
ISBN: 978-1-84712-151-6. [PDF price: £free]

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