The Government has agreed to a recommendation by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to assess the feasibility of issuing warnings rather than sanctions for first sanctionable offences.
View PAC’s Benefit Sanctions report
In its response to the PAC’s Benefit Sanctions report, the Government says it will carry out a ‘pre-sanction warning system’ trial but that legal changes are needed before any trial can begin.
The Government has also agreed to PAC’s recommendations to:
- monitor the use and take-up of protection from sanctions for vulnerable claimant groups; monitor and assess underlying causes of variations in sanction referrals across jobcentres;
- examine the wider impacts of sanctions on claimants through joint working between the DWP and the rest of government;
- improve sanctions statistics and data systems to help DWP understand the effect sanctions have on claimants' employment prospects.
The ‘target implementation’ of all these initiatives is January 2018.