The Department for Work and Pensions has agreed to introduce measures expected to improve the Work Programme for voluntary sector subcontractors, according to a response document published today.

The response document was published following a series of recommendations by a review group including Acevo and NCVO, as well as larger voluntary sector organisations and private prime contractors, looking at how to reduce problems for subcontractors in the programme – the government’s flagship welfare-to-work scheme.

Recommendations included longer tendering times, best-practice masterclasses to help charities tender, and a toolkit to help charities to understand the necessary financial modelling and to work through the tendering process.

All of these proposals were accepted in full by the DWP.

The group also recommended measures to introduce more certainty around volumes of referrals under the Work Programme. Charities have frequently complained that they have signed up as subcontractors under the programme, but have then not received any work from the prime contractors they are engaged with.

However the DWP said while it accepted “in principle” the group’s concerns, it would not introduce measures to provide guaranteed minimum levels of referrals.

Nick Davies (pictured), public services manager at NCVO, said the changes had the potential to make the Work Programme “significantly more hospitable” for smaller charities.

“There have been a number of problems with payment-by-results programmes,” he said. “It’s to DWP’s credit that they’ve engaged with the sector to work on this issue. I genuinely think these changes will make a substantive difference.”

Davies said that the changes would influence not just the Work Programme but other future large government programmes.

He said that whichever government was in power there were likely to be a number of large programmes involving prime and subcontractors, and that it was important to encourage best practice.