Future Employment Support – what we know – and what we don’t

Restart’s final referrals closed in June 2026, after five years and around 1.2 million referrals. Existing participants keep receiving support for up to 12 months from their referral date, so delivery winds down rather than stopping overnight, but no new participants are entering the scheme.

DWP intends to procure a new employment support programme for out of work Universal Credit claimants to replace it, currently known in the market by the working name Future Employment Support, with procurement understood to be starting in late 2026.

Whether you’re a prime shaping a bid or a specialist provider positioning to be part of one, the gap between Restart ending and Future Employment Support starting raises the same underlying questions: who gets visibility with whom during this market engagement period, how capability holds together with no guaranteed referral volume until 2028, and what will actually need to be proven once bids are being assembled.

This article sets out what’s confirmed so far, and is equally clear about what isn’t yet.

What Does DWP Actually Intend to Deliver?

The new employment support provision will still be for  Universal Credit claimants, but will  provide personalised, tailored support responsive to the needs of the individual and their local area.

It suggests the scope of support is likely to include skills, training and work experience, matching participants with employers, support with self-employment, intensive help with job applications and interview skills, support managing health conditions in the workplace, and wraparound support such as travel, childcare, ESOL and addiction support. None of this is confirmed by a published specification yet.

Is there a gap for  Long-Term Unemployed Adults?

It looks like it. Pathways to Work, DWP’s other major current reform, is explicitly for disabled people and people with health conditions who are economically inactive or at risk of leaving the labour market a different eligibility group. So, there’s currently no clearly announced contracted programme filling that specific space before the replacement arrives.

When Does Procurement Start, and When Does Delivery Begin?

Procurement is understood to be starting around late November 2026. Delivery is expected to commence around early 2028, potentially running for up to 5 years. These dates should be treated as working estimates rather than confirmed facts. This ramp-up time for winning bidders may indicate that the provision may differ from what has been provided previously under other employment programmes.

Will Support be Available Across all of Great Britain?

Support is expected to be available across England and Wales, integrated within local labour markets. Wales is expected to procure the service directly and separately, rather than through the same national process covering England.

How Is the Market Likely to Split Between Primes and Subcontractors?

Restart’s contracts were awarded to eight large prime contractors covering 12 contract areas, organisations with the capital and payment-by-results risk capacity to hold national contracts.

There’s understood to be a focus on delivery by SMEs and voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations under Future Employment Support, a different emphasis to Restart, but that’s expected to happen mainly through primes subcontracting specialist delivery, rather than smaller organisations bidding as primes themselves.

For primes, that means the subcontractor network isn’t a delivery detail, it’s a core part of how the bid gets judged. For smaller specialist providers, the realistic opportunity is being the partner a prime needs, to cover something it can’t deliver itself.

What Don’t we Know Yet?

Quite a lot. As things stand, the following haven’t been confirmed: the actual name of the service, the total value of the contracts, how the programme will be divided into Contract Package Areas geographically, what the programme will specifically ask for in delivery, expected performance levels and other performance measures.

How will the the payment mechanism work?

This isn’t yet answerable with certainty, and it’s worth being honest about that rather than guessing. DWP has said it’s reviewing payment mechanisms for Future Employment Support to balance provider risk more effectively, but how any attachment fee, service fee, or outcome payment structure Might work is still an unknown.

This is a live design question on both sides of a subcontract, how much outcome risk a prime chooses to hold centrally versus pass down, and what a subcontractor is prepared to accept..

Where Can You Track Developments?

Directly on GOV.UK’s procurement pages, Contracts Finder and Find a Tender, rather than through secondary reporting, since these are the primary sources and get updated as the thinking develops (DWP procurement page, Contracts Finder).

Will Innovation be a Requirement?

The government has stated that AI and innovation will be key to harnessing a service for the future. To what extent this will be a requirement is unknown. The appetite for innovation and change in a traditional sector has a tendency to focus on back end administrative tasks. But is this the way to equip the future workforce?

Saffron’s Create Your Own Future is a useful example here. It is an end to end  solution for both jobseekers and their advisors. For jobseekers it uses conversation to coach, a transferable skills assessment to match to careers and then to live job boards.

It also builds a CV and allows the individual to role play interview questions for the specific role they are interested in. It allows for on the job support for training and puts together an action plan. With 40 minutes of using it, job-seekers can have gone through the end to end experience and applied for roles.

For advisors, it saves 70% of administration time, allows them to give their expertise to jobseekers increasing quality scores and accelerating outcomes so that caseloads can be managed effectively. Localised service directories make referrals for health, debt, housing referrals manageable as well as outcomes and experience driven, having integrations that work well and follow through for jobseeker, advisor and referral partner.

Providers get data analytics at an unprecedented level – including better program design, sentiment analysis and user experience statistics as well as being commercially advantageous.

It’s live inside DWP’s Youth Guarantee Trailblazer through Peterborough United Foundation, as well as other youth and adult employment programmes. It’s also been independently monitored and evaluated.

Will technology that benefits all partes be a requirement, or will capital expenditure only be required for buildings and other infrastructure? This is the area where the government’s stance on innovation will really be judged. What’s your view?

This is based on DWP’s published Restart statistics and procurement pages, and the Find a Tender notice for the JCS employment support products engagement, as of July 2026. Several of the specifics here, the programme’s name, its exact structure, and the delivery start date, are explicitly still unconfirmed, so treat this as a snapshot of current market understanding rather than settled fact, and check GOV.UK directly before making commitments based on it.