The UK government claims to be cutting back on welfare spending: tightening eligibility, toughening work requirements and cracking down on so-called “benefit cheats”. But behind the scenes, billions are being quietly diverted into the coffers of private employment firms via schemes like Restart. These firms are paid not for helping people, but for simply tracking them.
What’s happening is not illegal. But it’s a system designed in such a way that providers can profit handsomely with minimal effort or accountability. In effect, the Restart Scheme turns Universal Credit claimants into data assets. If you’re referred while on UC, and you later go on to earn a modest income (even if entirely through your own efforts) the Restart provider gets paid by the government.
Restart providers are paid in stages, according to a commercial model buried in the DWP's contracts. Once a Universal Credit claimant is referred into Restart (via the PRaP system), a clock starts ticking. For the next 547 days (about 18 months), the provider is eligible to claim job outcome payments if that claimant hits certain earnings milestones:
£1000 earned: First outcome payment
£2000 earned: Second outcome payment
£4250 earned: Final “sustained employment” bonus worth up to £3,000
These earnings can be cumulative, across multiple short-term jobs. And here’s the thing: the job doesn’t have to be found with their help. If the claimant gets work on their own (or even returns to a job they already had lined up) the provider still profits, as long as that PRaP referral is in place.
This is not about employment support. It’s about monetising unemployment. Once you're tagged in the Restart system, your financial movements are monitored for 18 months via real-time data sharing between HMRC and the DWP. This continues even after you close your Universal Credit claim, with earnings still reported for six months.
Restart doesn’t exist to help people into work. It exists to ensure providers get paid when people return to work anyway. That’s why Work Coaches are under pressure to refer as many people as possible.
These outcomes are funded through the Department for Work and Pensions. Restart is part of a vast ecosystem of outsourced welfare services, built on a logic of per-capita capture, automated tracking and staged monetisation.
The public is told that tough love and strict rules are saving money. But the truth is that a significant portion of the welfare budget is quietly redirected into opaque private contracts that are rarely scrutinised and often rewarded for doing little more than watching you earn.
There’s no fraud here, just an exploitative business model that feeds off claimant data. It's technically legal, politically useful and financially lucrative. But it’s also profoundly cynical.
At the same time claimants are harassed, sanctioned and made to jump through hoops for support, Restart providers are cashing in on their efforts, even when they contribute nothing at all to those outcomes. This is the hidden cost of welfare outsourcing. And it’s time more people knew about it.
