Statutory guidance

Chapter 6: Payments

Updated 6 March 2023

Living with COVID-19

This guidance has been updated to include arrangements that DWP, as CFO for our ESF 2014 to 2020 Programme, has put in place to allow you to continue to deliver provision now that all COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted and the updated government advice has progressed to ‘Living with COVID-19’.

A blended delivery model is acceptable to the department longer term. However, please note, that whilst the department supports a blended delivery model for all ESF funded provision, this must be based on participant need and the preferred method of delivery is face to face. Our Performance Managers will continue to monitor whether remote delivery is being overly relied upon and will discuss this with you during your monthly CPR meetings.

Your records should clearly state why remote delivery was the most appropriate and an email audit trail should exist to demonstrate paperwork was completed in agreement with the participant if no wet signature has been obtained.

As all COVID restrictions have been lifted and the updated government advice has progressed to ‘Living with COVID-19’ it is no longer appropriate for ESF-related paperwork, completed when delivering provision remotely, to contain ‘COVID-19’ in lieu of a signature from 7 May 2022.

We are now asking that ‘COVID-19’ is replaced by ‘Remote delivery’ in the signature box for those participants who cannot be seen face to face. The ‘COVID-19’ wording will not be accepted on any ESF 1420 Initial and End forms or Annex1: ESF 2014 to 2020: Good News Story Template and Consent Form submitted from 7 May 2022.

When you are delivering face to face, a wet signature must be obtained, and retrospective signatures should be attained when the participant is next seen in person and such form/s retained on file for audit.

The majority of current ESF 2014 to 2020 provider guidance, from chapter 1 to Annex 11 will still apply and are to be used in conjunction with the ‘Living with COVID-19’ period arrangements cited in the text boxes through this and other applicable chapters.

Background

6.1. There are three payments associated with this DWP ESF 2014 to 2020 provision:

• delivery fee

• short job outcome payment

• sustained job outcome payment

6.2. Payments made in respect of DWP ESF 2014 to 2020 require you to meet evidence requirements as set out in the DWP Framework Generic Provider Guidance Chapter 11b: ESF requirements 2014 to 2020 (England only).

6.3. DWP Performance Compliance Officers (PCO) and Performance Managers will carry out compliance and quality checks during the life of the contract, for more information see Chapter 7 of this guidance.

COVID-19: PCO Checks

Due to DWP resource pressures during COVID-19, PCO compliance checks were paused. Checks have returned to business as usual and may be undertaken remotely or in person.

6.4. The Provider Payment Validation Team will undertake validation checks on Job Outcome payments.

6.5. The ‘VAT’ section clearly defines the provider’s responsibilities for a self-billing contract. You should also refer to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) VAT Notice 700/62: Self – Billing to ensure that you fully understand HMRC’s requirements for the payment of VAT.

Delivery Fee Payments

6.6. The Delivery fee will be paid monthly in arrears; there will be 24 equal instalments commencing one calendar month after the Service Start Date.

6.7. The Delivery fee supports you in delivering your service to participants.

6.8. The following is an example to show how the Delivery fee payments are made during the provision period.

1. The first Delivery fee payment payable monthly via PRaP commences one calendar month after the Service Start Date for example. If the Service start date is 6th September the first Delivery fee Period will end on 5th October and the Delivery fee will be made after this date.

2. Delivery fee payments 2 to 24 each payable monthly in equal instalments via PRaP, payment 24 will be the final Delivery fee payment made.

3. In the third year of the Provision there will be no Delivery fee payments.

Short Job Outcome Payments

6.9. You will be eligible to claim a Short Job Outcome payment when a participant has been in employment for a cumulative period of 13 weeks, as long as all 13 weeks fall within a period of 26 consecutive weeks. See the Employment section for a definition of employment for the purpose of claiming an outcome payment.

6.10. The first week of the 26 consecutive weeks and the first week of the 13 cumulative weeks will be the same week and will commence within the provision duration or 4 week tracking period during the contract. See the Tracking Period section for a definition.

6.11. You can only claim one Short Job Outcome payment per participant.

Sustained Job Outcome Payments

6.12. You will be eligible to claim a Sustained Job Outcome payment when a participant has been in employment for a cumulative period of 26 weeks within a 52 week period. The first week of this 52 week period will be the first week of the short job outcome. Where a short job outcome has not been achieved (see Example 3 at 6.26) it is still possible to claim a sustained job outcome where the first of the 52 consecutive weeks of employment has commenced within the provision duration or 4 week tracking period.

6.13. You are prevented from using any periods of employment which occurred before the first week that contributed towards the short job outcome where achieved. See the Employment section for a definition of employment for the purpose of claiming an outcome payment.

6.14. Only one sustained job outcome payment can be claimed per participant.

Payment Validation

6.15. DWP will, to the extent it deems necessary, undertake checks on outcome (short job outcome and sustained job outcome) claims and or associated fees to establish their validity and ensure you are being paid appropriately for the outcomes you have achieved.

6.16. Checks may include: Pre-payment and or Post payment checks on all or some claims including extrapolating the results where a sample of claims are checked from across a wider population of claims. Samples will be drawn in line with the terms and conditions of your contract/s.

6.17. As part of any Post Payment Validation, where DWP identifies erroneous outcomes, not only will these be recovered, but the error rate will also inform any extrapolation calculation which will be applied across untested like for like claims from the same period.

General Payment Information and Examples

6.18. You will be eligible to claim a sustained job outcome payment for a participant without a short job outcome having been achieved or claimed (for the same participant) as long as the participant has been in employment for a cumulative period of 26 weeks, as long as all 26 weeks fall within a period of 52 consecutive weeks.

6.19. Where a short job outcome has been achieved, the first week of 52 consecutive weeks will be the same first week of the 26 consecutive weeks with which the short job outcome was achieved.

6.20. No period of employment falling earlier than the first period of employment contributing to the short job outcome (if claimed) can contribute to a sustained job outcome.

6.21. No period of employment contributing to a sustained job outcome should fall earlier than the first period of employment contributing to the short job outcome.

6.22. Job outcomes can be made up of more than one employer and more than one job so long as the employment aggregates to 13 weeks in a 26-week period for a short job outcome or 26 weeks in a 52-week period for a sustained job outcome.

6.23. These examples are for illustration purposes only and are not exhaustive.

6.24. Example 1 – participant starts employment during the 52 week provision period and is eligible for short and sustained job outcome payment.

Outcome payment activities	Date for illustration only	Provision duration week
Participant start date on provision	Monday 26th Sept 2016	Week 1
Provision end date	Monday 8th May 2017	Week 33 - Short job outcome achieved and participant becomes an early completer
Employment start date	Monday 28th Nov 2016	Week 10
Employment recorded on PRaP during provision duration		Week 10-13 (4 weeks) Week 19-21 (3 weeks) Week 28-33 (6 weeks) - short job outcome achieved and participant becomes an early completer Week 42-45 (4 weeks) Week 49-52 (4 weeks) Week 54-58 (5 weeks) - Sustained job outcome achieved
26 consecutive weeks for a short job outcome	Monday 28th Nov 2016 to Sunday 28th May 2017	Week 10-35 (26 weeks)
52 consecutive weeks for sustained job outcome	Monday 28th Nov 2016 to Sunday 26th Nov 2017	Week 10-61 (52 weeks)

6.25. Example 2 – participant starts employment during 4 week tracking period and is eligible for short and sustained job outcome payment.

Outcome payment activities	Date for illustration only	Provision duration week
Participant start date on provision	Monday 26th Sept 2016	Week 1
Provision end date	Monday 18th Sept 2017	Week 52 – participant becomes a completer
Employment start date	Monday 2nd Oct 2017	Week 54 - during 4 week tracking period as max participation reached
Employment recorded on PRaP during provision duration		Week 54-57 (4 weeks) Week 63-65 (3 weeks) Week 72-77 (6 weeks) - short job outcome achieved Week 86-89 (4 weeks) Weeks 93-96 (4 weeks) Week 98-102 (5 weeks) - sustained job outcome achieved
26 consecutive weeks for a short job outcome	Monday 2nd Oct 2017 to Sunday 1st Apr 2018	Week 54-79 (26 weeks)
52 consecutive weeks for sustained job outcome	Monday 2nd Oct 2017 to Sunday 30th Sept 2018	Week 54-105 (52 weeks)

6.26. Example 3 – participant fails to achieve a short job outcome but achieves a sustained job outcome

Outcome payment activities	Date for illustration only	Provision duration week
Participant start date on provision	Monday 26th Sept 2016	Week 1
Provision end date	Monday 8th May 2017	Week 33 - Short job outcome achieved and participant becomes an early completer
Employment start date	Monday 28th Nov 2016	Week 10
Employment recorded on PRaP during provision duration		Week 10-13 (4 weeks) Week 19-21 (3 weeks) Week 32-36 (4 weeks) - Short job outcome failed and participant does not become an early completer Week 42-47 (6 weeks) Week 49-52 (4 weeks) - Participant becomes a completer Week 54-58 (5 weeks) - Sustained job outcome achieved
26 consecutive weeks for a short job outcome	Monday 28th Nov 2016 to Sunday 28th May 2017	Week 10-35 (26 weeks)
52 consecutive weeks for sustained job outcome	Monday 28th Nov 2016 to Sunday 26th Nov 2017	Week 10-61 (52 weeks)

Universal Credit Job Outcome Payments

6.27. The outcome measure for people on current non-Universal Credit benefits is based on an off benefit check followed by confirming that the relevant employment duration of 13/26 consecutive weeks has been achieved. This is done by carrying out DWP system checks and verifying employment information with participant and/or employers. Under Universal Credit (UC) the off benefit check in isolation is not sufficient, as some claimants may still be in receipt of UC whilst they are in work. For claimants with UC interest sufficient to fail the off benefit check, an earnings-based outcome measure is applied to enable outcome payments to be made when claimants have been supported into sustainable work, but where they continue to be in receipt of UC.

6.28. To be considered as ‘employed’ the participant was either:

• not claiming or otherwise in receipt of a Relevant Benefit, or

• in the case of a participant continuing to claim/receive Universal Credit, earned at least the Minimum Threshold (Administrative Earnings Threshold (AET)) when averaged over the claim period

6.29. Minimum Threshold/AET is equivalent to net earnings at £78 per week for participants aged 25 and over and £63 per week for young persons and apprentices for 13 weeks (for a Short Job Outcome) or 26 weeks (for a Sustained Job Outcome) excluding self-employment. Earnings can be aggregated across the relevant contributing weeks to demonstrate that the Participant has met the Minimum Threshold/AET as follows:

• 13 weeks (for a Short Job Outcome):
  • 13 x £78 for participants aged 25 and over = £1,014
  • 13 x £63 for young persons and apprentices = £819
• 26 weeks (for a Sustained Job Outcome):
  • 26 x £78 for participants aged 25 and over = £2,028
  • 26 x £63 for young persons and apprentices = £1638

Note: The provider will still need to retain evidence of employment for each week contributing towards the Job Outcome, and the aggregated earnings must occur during those weeks.

Note 2: The UC earnings threshold figures above are correct in 2019 but these can be updated so providers will need to regularly check GOV.UK UC documents; with UC Work Coaches and participants in receipt of UC to confirm these amounts have not altered.

6.30. Earnings contributing to the Minimum Threshold/AET will be recorded on HMRC’s RTI system as having been paid DWP reserves the right, where the periodicity of earnings is not weekly and or where earnings from separate schemes feature in overlapping periods, to undertake as necessary further checks and to determine at its reasonable discretions, the appropriate number of weeks to which the earnings should be attributed.

We will still require the provider to record (and have evidence for) the employment start date in line with audit requirements.

Universal Credit Self-Employment Job Outcomes

6.31. For UC self-employment short job outcome payments, providers will be eligible to claim where they have completed 13 weeks of trading; complied with UC self-employment requirements and stayed within the Light Touch or Working Enough regimes through the period.

You will be eligible to claim a sustained job outcome payment when a participant has been in employment for a cumulative period of 26 weeks within a 52 week period. The first week of this 52 week period will be the first week of the short job outcome, or, where a short job outcome has not been achieved, the first of the 52 consecutive weeks and the first of the 26 cumulative weeks will also be the first week of the short job outcome and will commence within the provision duration or 4 week tracking period.

Please see section 5.19 for examples of UC self-employment evidence acceptable when participants move into work. For paid outcome purposes, evidence requirements also need to cover the full duration of the self-employment trading period.

Note, the example benefits rates provided in paragraph 6.24 are correct at the point of publication but could be subject to change over time.

Note II, The UC Light Touch regime is the minimum point that participants can be defined as employed for ESF paid outcome purposes. To be counted as UC Light Touch participants earnings will need to be above the Administrative Earnings Threshold (AET) but are not enough to take them above the relevant individual Conditionality Earnings Threshold (CET).

Please see Annex 8 Labour Market Definitions for further information on the fit between UC and ESF Labour Market definitions (Employed, Unemployed, Inactive).

Special Customer Records (SCR) Payments

6.32. The majority of claims for payment must be submitted via PRaP however, where you have a claim for a customer who is granted Special Customer Records (SCR) status (as determined by HMRC Special Section D) you are required to submit the claim following the SCR clerical claim process. Where DWP identifies that SCR status is not granted the claim will be rejected.

6.33. Where you have a SCR claim/s, you are required to print off the relevant form and complete manually. The forms can be found at Annex 11 of this guidance. You must only submit claims on these forms on the rare occasions that SCR status is granted.

6.34. This clerical process mirrors the PRaP automated process. You are required to provide all information regarding employment details that you would normally submit in PRaP on the appropriate claim form and supporting annex, if applicable. The PPVT will then validate all elements of employment with employers and/or customers. Incomplete forms will not be actioned and will be returned

6.35. Guidance to assist you in the completion of the form can be found by opening the excel form and placing the cursor over the small red corners of the relevant cells.

6.36. You should send your fully completed claim form to:

Provider Payment Validation Team (PPVT)
Department for Work and Pensions
Finance Group
Contracted Health and Employment Services Directorate
Floor 1,
Hartshead Square,
Sheffield
S1 2FD

All clerical documents carrying personal information should be retained securely in line with the Data Protection Act Principles.

6.37. Once validated, the supporting information job and sustainment claims should be retained for ESF audit purposes.

Tracking Period

6.38. The tracking period is a 4 week period following immediately after the maximum provision duration (not early completion). Eligible employment for outcome payments may start within this 4 week period or the provision duration.

6.39. There will be no tracking period where the participant becomes an early completer.

6.40. For information on completing provision please see Chapter 5 of this guidance.

First period of qualifying employment for any outcome payment must fall within either of these periods:

• provision duration (52 week maximum from start) - For the London Troubled Families Contracts, the maximum duration of the ESF Provision for a Participant is a continuous period of 65 weeks from the Participant’s start.

• 4 week tracking period

Recording Employment Periods

6.41. You are required to record on PRaP, as it occurs, each individual period of a participant’s employment that falls within the 108 weeks regardless of whether the period is used to contribute to any outcome claims.

Record all employment periods falling within these periods:

• provision duration (52 week maximum from start) - For the London Troubled Families Contracts, the maximum duration of the ESF Provision for a Participant is a continuous period of 65 weeks from the Participant’s start.

• 4 week tracking period (where applicable)

• 64 week payment tail period

Claiming Payments

6.42. All payments made in respect of this provision will be made via PRaP. Further information regarding PRaP can be found in the DWP Generic Provider Guidance.

6.43. When submitting a job outcome claim the following actions need to be followed sequentially:

1. The End Line needs to state the day before the job start date in both the ‘Date 1’ and ‘Date 2’ fields. This is solely a PRaP mechanism to enable the job outcome data to be recorded correctly and does not reflect how you record the job start date on your systems.

2. The Short Job Outcome Line has to have 2 dates recorded. ‘Date 1’ the actual job start date and ‘Date 2’, the actual job outcome date when the participant has completed 13 weeks of employment.

3. The Sustained Job Outcome Line has to have 2 dates recorded. ‘Date 1’ the actual start date of employment and ‘Date 2’ the qualifying date for the sustained job outcome. Please see Provider referrals and payments (PRAP) section below for more information.

6.44. You will also be expected to maintain a robust system of internal controls which must include appropriate checks, monitoring arrangements and adequate records to demonstrate that you are entitled to make the claim. The records maintained need to be sufficient not only to support any claim for job outcomes payments but also to support your internal management checks and independent validation for example by DWP and other external bodies. The records maintained should document how and when the information was obtained.

6.45. Further information regarding the preferred evidence of employment for ESF audit can be found in Chapter 5 para 5.39 this includes the requirement to evidence that destination results occur within 4 weeks of completing provision. Note, the relevant Into Work and Into Self Employment evidence examples at section 5.39 can be used for Job Outcome evidence but you will have to ensure there are documented records to cover the full duration of the relevant employment period. Further ESF Audit requirements can be found in the DWP Framework Generic Provider Guidance Chapter 11b: ESF requirements 2014 to 2020 (England only).

6.46. Payments will be paid directly into your bank account, monthly in arrears. Please note that DWP can only make direct payments to United Kingdom and Northern Ireland bank accounts.

You should claim outcome payments in the 8 weeks from the point it becomes eligible (see outcome payment definitions for short and sustained job outcome payments). The final date that any claim for payment can be accepted will be 64 weeks after the provision duration ends. (The 64 weeks are made up of the maximum 52 weeks in which job outcomes are claimable, 4-week Tracking period where applicable and the 8 weeks to claim the outcome payment).

We do not expect Providers to be making a claim for an outcome that has exceeded the 8 week claim limit as specified above, unless there are exceptional circumstances. If the 8 week period has elapsed, and you wish to make an outcome claim, please contact [email protected] using the ESF1420 Outside Claim Limit Notification Stencil (provided in Annex 12), with the subject header of ESF1420 Outside Claim Limit Notification and detail your reason for making this claim late. You must return the Annex 12 within 7 working days of the late outcome being submitted on PRaP. Submit your claim through PRaP first, which will be placed in hold, then return your Annex 12.

DWP will carefully consider the reason provided for the delay before advising if we will allow the claim to be subject to validation.

6.47. Where a participant moves from your DWP ESF 2014 to 2020 provision to another provider due to a transfer or change of address prior to any Job Outcome payments becoming achieved, you will not be entitled to claim any outcome payments relating to that participant.

6.48. Where a sustained job outcome has been paid without a short job outcome having been achieved, short job outcomes can still be claimed so long as it would not contravene any other requirement and or undermine the eligibility of the existing sustained job outcome.

Should any ineligible participants be found to have participated on provision, DWP reserve the right to recover any corresponding overpayment of outcome fees.

Employment

6.49. For the purpose of claiming outcomes, employment is defined as, ‘each week contributing to the required number of weeks in work’ and will be a period of seven consecutive calendar days during which the participant was employed (be that under contract, PAYE, self-employment or otherwise with the exception of volunteering) on at least one day (but not necessarily for any minimum number of hours). Please see Annex 8 Labour Market Definitions for the labour market definitions of employment.

6.50. To be considered as ‘employed’ for the entirety of the seven day period the participant was either:

• not claiming or otherwise in receipt of a Relevant Benefit

• or, in the case of a Participant continuing to claim/receive Universal Credit (UC), earned at least the aggregated Minimum Threshold during the contributing weeks – see para 6.24

6.51. Relevant Benefit means any combination of Incapacity Benefit, Carer’s Allowance, Severe Disablement Allowance, Jobseekers Allowance, Employment Support Allowance, Income Support and/or Universal Credit as claimed or paid to the participant.

Minimum thresholds applying to Universal Credit

6.52. Please refer to DWP Generic Provider Guidance Chapter 5.

ESF Documentation and Evidence Retention Requirements

6.53. As this provision is funded by ESF it is subject to stringent audit by DWP and EC Auditors who will require evidence that the provision is being delivered in accordance with the contract and all payments are clearly and appropriately evidenced. Failure to meet these audit requirements can result in financial penalties or withdrawal of funding.

6.54. You must, therefore, keep evidence and key documentation in support of provision delivery and payments for ESF provision. It is your responsibility to ensure that documents and data can be relied on for ESF audit purposes. You must have robust systems in place to ensure that documentation (paper or electronic) is securely held and is easily retrievable and accessible throughout the retention period. Some suggested evidence of employment examples are detailed in ESF Provider Guidance para 5.39. This list is neither prescriptive nor exhaustive and for paid outcome purposes evidence will need to be captured for the full duration of the relevant employment period.

6.55. For expenditure such as childcare and travel you are expected to ensure payments are for actual costs, and to obtain evidence of such costs being incurred and paid (receipts, invoices etc). Where appropriate, and as part of the Compliance and Monitoring process, DWP will check appropriate records where participants have received such expenses from the provider.

6.56. Further details of the documentation that must be retained as a minimum can be found in the DWP Framework Generic Provider Guidance Chapter 11b: ESF requirements 2014 to 2020 (England only).

Fraud Awareness and Reporting

6.57. If you become aware of suspected fraud either within your organisation or supply chain, please ensure you make your DWP Performance Manager is aware. You can also report suspected fraud via the National Fraud Hotline. Please stay familiarised with the 4 Principles of Fraud you should operate as specified in Annex 8.1 of your contractual Terms and Conditions. Both the 4 Principles of Fraud and the National Hotline can also be found in DWP Framework Generic Provider Guidance Chapter 11b: ESF requirements 2014 to 2020 (England only) paragraph 62, 3rd bullet, DWP Grievance Policy link.

Participant Consent

6.58. You will need to ensure that you obtain a participant’s written, informed consent to allow DWP to contact a participant’s employer or for you to contact an employer in connection with short job outcome payments or sustained job outcome payments. For this you must use the consent form which is to be found in Annex 6.

6.59. It is your responsibility to obtain this consent and to determine when it is obtained. Failure to obtain this consent may result in DWP not being able to validate your claims. DWP will not pay any claims that are not validated.

6.60. The designation order in place which allows the Department and providers to contact the customer’s employer directly to validate employment details without requiring consent from participants does not apply to ESF14/20.

6.61. Where a participant has not given consent to contact employers you must set the consent tab on PRaP to ‘no’. The consent tab can be found on the Job Details Screen. Where customers decline to give consent you must collect employment evidence through participant wage slips.

6.62. Even where consent has not been supplied to gain employer evidence it is essential that providers supply the employers’ contact details, namely, the address, phone number and/or emails where they have this information as this will be crucial for assisting with participant validation conversations and increasing success rates etc. Please enter the employer and participant contact details in the ‘Other Information’ box in the Job Details Screen.

6.63. In addition to employer/participant contacts, you must enter in the “Other Information” box on the Job Details Screen that participant wage slips will be collected for employed results evidence. Providers need to be aware that some of the Managing Authority criteria for evidencing paid employment results, as per chapter 5 of this guidance, may be additional/different to the DWP outcome validation. We would strongly advise that providers adhere to both the DWP and MA evidence requirements but ultimately it is the providers’ responsibility to satisfy themselves they have robust evidence to support paid claims and audit testing.

Living with COVID-19: Participant Consent for Employer Evidence

The Annex 6 Consent to Share Participant Information template (and see sections 6.56 to 6.61) should be annotated ‘Remote delivery’ in the signature box to confirm the participant was employed during this event. The date should be included. All case notes held on file must reflect the conversations which have taken place with participants and reflect the information put on the forms. Email evidence for audit should be gathered and retained to demonstrate the individual’s participation on the programme.

As all COVID restrictions have been lifted the updated government advice has progressed to ‘Living with COVID-19’. Whilst the department supports a blended delivery model for all ESF funded provision, this must be based on participant need and the preferred method of delivery is face to face. Our Performance Managers will continue to monitor whether remote delivery is being overly relied upon and will discuss this with you during your monthly CPR meetings.

The use of the words ‘Remote delivery’ in lieu of a wet signature must only be used for participants that cannot be seen face-to-face. Your records should clearly state why remote delivery was the most appropriate and an email audit trail should exist to demonstrate paperwork was completed in agreement with the participant if no wet signature has been obtained.

When you are delivering face-to-face, a wet signature must be obtained, and retrospective signatures should be attained when the participant is next seen in person and such form/s retained on file for audit.

VAT

6.64. Your VAT obligations are covered in the Terms and Conditions.

Additional VAT requirements for self-billing contacts

6.65. The following guidance should be read in conjunction with the HMRC guidance VAT Notice 700/62: Self-Billing.

6.66. HMRC guidance states that under a self-billing contract both parties are responsible for ensuring that the VAT is charged correctly on invoices. As part of your company’s bid you were asked to provide the VAT rate(s) that should be charged for each part of the funding model (delivery fee, short job outcome payment and sustained job outcome payment). These VAT rates will be applied to the self-billing invoices produced by PRaP.

Important

6.67. You will be asked to confirm that the VAT rate(s) quoted as part of your bid are still correct prior to commencement date of the contract.

DWP’s responsibilities

6.68. DWP is responsible for ensuring that:

• the correct rate(s) of VAT are applied to invoice

• an annual self-billing agreement is in place

• VAT rate(s) are changed if you notify a change

6.69. DWP will seek agreement from you to the self-billing arrangement on an annual basis and request that you confirm the VAT rate(s) to be applied to all aspects of the funding model.

Provider’s responsibilities

6.70. You are responsible for:

• the correct rate(s) of VAT, as notified from you, are applied to invoices

• providing a signed agreement promptly on an annual basis when requested by DWP

• ensuring that DWP is immediately notified of a change in the VAT rate(s) should they change during an agreement term

• ensuring that duplicate invoices are not sent to DWP for a supply which is self-billed, and

• ensuring that you fully understand and comply with VAT Notice 700/62.

Provider Referrals and Payments

General Information

6.71. PRaP system enables secure, automated exchanges of information about participants referred to provision and payments from DWP to providers.

6.72. For further details of specific ESF 2014 to 2020 PRaP actions please see the table below.

Steps	Line	Description	Information	Shipping Order
1	1	Start	Firstly input a Unique Reference this is something to easily identify this ASN to you. It could be a reference which relates to your own system, or something to help you identify this customer. Date 1: This is the date the customer has started on the provision, as defined by the ESF 2014/20 policy Date 2: This is the anticipated end date of provision	1st
2	2	End	Before you can claim for any outcome the following information needs to be recorded:- Unique Reference: This is something to easily identify this ASN to you. It could be a reference which relates directly to your own system, or something to help you identify this customer. Date 1: The customer’s last day on provision. Date 2: The same as date 1. End Reason: The reason the provision has ended	2nd
3	n/a	Job Details	Before you ship the outcome lines, you will need to enter the Job Details. After these are input make sure they have updated then you can ship the line. Employment Type = Employment Job Start Date = Date they started the job Job End Date = Date the job ended DWP Permitted to contact employer = no All the rest of the mandatory fields must then be completed with ‘N/A’ Use the ‘Other Information’ field at the bottom to record any evidence.	n/a
4	3	Short Job Outcome Payment	Ship the ‘Short Job Outcome Payment’ line Date 1: Start date of the employment Date 2: Qualifying date for the job	2nd
5	4	Sustained Job Outcome	Ship the ‘Unsupported Job Outcome’ line Date 1: Start date for the employment Date 2: Qualifying date for the sustained job outcome	3rd

6.73. Providers access PRaP via DWP Authenticate; you download information to manage on your individual systems and update information about participants progress into PRaP; payment claims and calculations are generated automatically. Provider security requirements can be found on the contract Terms and Conditions page in the document Procurement at DWP.

6.74. The PRaP system also provides DWP and providers with transparent data about the cost and performance of Contracted Employment Programmes (CEP), supporting contract and performance management.

6.75. You should also refer to UPK/Tutor PRaP on-line Guidance, and DWP Generic Provider Guidance Chapter 5.

6.76. For further information about PRaP, please see our Questions and Answers.

6.77. Read the Provider Referrals and Payments (PRaP) system for DWP guidance for more information on the PRaP system.