Over 700 people have engaged in a new, community-led approach to finding work and increasing their earnings as a pilot programme involving social housing landlords across England enters its second year. Already, 150 participants have moved into work.

Led by Learning and Work Institute (L&W), the JobsPlus pilots provide intensive employment and wraparound support for residents in ten sites across the country. The programme targets social housing residents—after research showing they make up one in four of the UK’s economically inactive population—helping to address a key barrier to achieving the Government’s ambition of an 80% employment rate.

A range of services are available on-site in local community hubs, with support shaped by residents and delivered in partnership with other local organisations. Local volunteers champion the programme among their communities, and JobsPlus participants are also offered a financial incentive for finding and staying in work. In a departure from previous programmes, the ten pilot sites offer employment support to all working-age residents, with no additional eligibility criteria.

First launched a year ago, the first year of the JobsPlus pilot was made possible by a grant of £3.2 million from the Labour Market Evaluation and Pilots funding from HM Treasury via the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Youth Futures Foundation has provided a further £1.9 million to support ongoing delivery and evaluation, focussed on how the programme supports 16-to-24-year-olds. Support from the Government for a second year of delivery was announced in July 2025 by Minister for Employment Alison McGovern. The pilot is currently expected to run until March 2026.

JobsPlus is backed by evidence in the United States, showing that it can lead to better, long-term employment outcomes for residents and for their children 20 years later. The Work and Pensions Select Committee officially recommended that the UK Government trial the US-style JobsPlus programme in 2023. This followed L&W, the independent policy and research organisation leading the development and delivery of the pilot, working proactively with 19 social landlords convened by Communities that Work (CtW) between 2016 and 2018 to develop a proposal for testing the JobsPlus model in the UK.

It is hoped this groundbreaking partnership between landlords, tenants and key local agencies will provide targeted support for more people that need it, with an interim evaluation report due in autumn this year.

Research from L&W, CtW and the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) found that social housing residents are nearly twice as likely to be out of work as those in other tenures, making this a key group to focus support on. This is linked to a combination of housing allocation policies and labour market disadvantages. These tenants are more than twice as likely to be disabled, more than three times as likely to be lone parents or to have no qualifications. Social housing residents in work are twice as likely to work in lower-skilled jobs, and they are on average paid a third less than people who live in other tenures.

L&W is leading the JobsPlus pilot programme in collaboration with CtW and IES, with additional support from MDRC, the US-based research organisation behind the conception of JobsPlus. Youth Futures Foundation – the What Works Centre for youth employment, with a specific focus on marginalised young people – has partnered in designing a robust evaluation approach.