What is this programme of work about?
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has commissioned the Institute for Employment Studies, in partnership with Learning and Work Institute, to deliver evidence reviews and practical resources on key labour market issues to help inform local policymakers.
This evidence base may ultimately feed into an independent Labour Market What Works Centre (LMWWC) which DWP is considering establishing. The LMWWC would champion and promote evidence usage and generation to produce improved labour market outcomes, especially at the local level.
The project aims to support local policy makers to better understand what works in improving labour market outcomes for out-of-work and in-work individuals.
Our goal is to meet the evidence needs of local government and health services, and support them in designing, commissioning and delivering labour market interventions in local areas. We are working with experts and end users to define the scope of the reviews and determine how findings can most usefully be presented and shared.
What approach will we take?
This programme of work has three distinct stages:
Stage 1 – User Consultation and mapping of existing evidence (December 2025-April 2026)
A series of workshops and interviews will be conducted with a range of local stakeholders including representatives from Mayoral Strategic Authorities (MSAs), Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and Local Authorities (LAs). This consultation will explore their use of evidence when designing local labour market interventions, barriers to evidence and evaluation usage, preferences for the populations and interventions the reviews should focus on, and preferred formats for the review outputs.
We will also consult expert advisors from the What Works Network and academic institutions throughout the programme. Their role stage will be to help develop our approach to conducting and disseminating the reviews, ensure the reviews are based on the latest national and international evidence, and that they are conducted with academic rigour.
Stage 2 – Evidence reviews (reporting in July 2026 and January 2027)
Once the main themes of the reviews are agreed, consideration will be given to the scope and scale of each review in consultation with our expert advisors. Each review will either be a rapid evidence or systematic review, depending on the size and nature of the existing evidence base. Outputs will be published for each review, with the first available in May 2026, another in July 2026, and the rest in January 2027. These will be accompanied by additional resources for local stakeholders, such as practical toolkits and workshops, to support them to utilise this evidence in their work. The precise format of these resources will reflect stakeholder preferences, identified during initial User Consultation.
Stage 3 – Lessons learned (January-April 2027)
The final stage aims to assess how far the content and format of the reviews supported users to effectively engage with labour market evidence and use it in their work. It will explore how involved local stakeholders felt in the consultation process and whether they feel their preferences were reflected in the final resources. This stage of the programme will include interviews and panel discussions with local stakeholders involved in the previous stages.
Following this programme of work, the evidence base and lessons learned may be used by DWP to form an independent Labour Market What Works Centre (LMWWC).
