Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many full-time equivalent work coaches her Department employs; and what the average caseload is for each full-time equivalent work coach as at 24 February 2021.

The department employs 20217 Work Coaches and their average workload for IWS (Intensive Work Search) cases is 180. These figures were correct at the date of the last reporting period which was 31 January 2021 for the number of Work Coaches employed and 21 February 2021 for the average caseload. We are currently recruiting an additional 13,500 Work Coaches which we are on track to achieve by the end of the financial year.