Universal Credit: Future Telephony and Digital Support Offer 2022

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) wishes to give notice of a potential funding opportunity for organisations to deliver and provide support for citizens of England, Scotland and Wales with making, completing and maintaining a new UC claim.

We anticipate that any formal competition process may commence in early Summer 2021 in order to agree any new arrangement from 1st April 2022 (for an initial period of 1 year to 31st March 2022).

Through this Request for Information (RFI) process we want to understand whether there are organisations who could currently, or would wish to, compete to provide support as set out in this document. We have asked some set questions below which we think will help us understand the appetite and readiness of existing or new organisations to act in this space.

We invite feedback from all private and public organisations, including the Voluntary, Community & Social Enterprise sector, to inform our strategy. This will help us to build our requirements and identify areas of innovation for supporting people to make a claim for UC. Feedback received will be used to develop any final Request for Proposal pack.

This market engagement exercise is also designed to ensure that any final Request for Proposal pack provides all potential organisations with a clear understanding of DWP requirements to help reduce the number of questions that may be raised during any competition process.

Information supplied in response to this RFI, and any discussions throughout the duration of the market engagement process, will not be subject to formal evaluation or scoring as this is not a formal application.

To maximise the benefits from the market engagement and best inform requirements, respondents are encouraged to participate and be as open and detailed in their responses as possible. Depending on the response to this RFI, there may be further engagement exercises.

Based on volumes previously seeking support, our planning assumption is that c250k people may seek support from the offer to make a UC claim in the 2022/23 year. It is anticipated that the funding referenced in this RFI will be used by organisations to support people, through telephony and digital/webchat channels only, with making, completing and maintaining a new UC claim. We are developing a separate face to face support approach based on those who need much more complex support so funding for face to face support is not part of this RFI.

Responses to this document, and all other communications, queries and questions relating to this market engagement stage, must be sent via the email address: UCfuture.support@dwp.gov.uk

Please note the deadline for completing and returning this RFI document is 21st May 2021

Further information is available in the attached documents.