The Restart Scheme is winding down. Its extended referral window ran to June 2026, so as of July 2026 it is effectively closed to new referrals — existing participants continue their support, but the flow of new starts has stopped. Taking its place is a different model of welfare-to-work: Connect to Work, a locally-commissioned, voluntary supported-employment programme rolling out across England and Wales through 2025–26, sitting within the wider Get Britain Working and Pathways to Work agenda set out in the March 2025 Green Paper. For employability providers, the headline isn't the rebrand — it's what the reset does to how you staff delivery. Large national Restart caseload teams are giving way to locally-commissioned services built on the supported-employment (IPS) model, and that shifts hiring demand toward employment advisers, employment specialists and key workers. Here's what's changed, and what it means for your workforce plan.
Policy status and figures below are dated to 2 July 2026 and drawn from gov.uk (DWP). Referral numbers are official DWP statistics to end-April 2026; Connect to Work coverage is rolling out area by area, so confirm your local Delivery Area's live status before planning around it.
Is the Restart Scheme still open to new referrals in 2026?
No — treat Restart as closed to new referrals from summer 2026 onwards. The scheme launched in June 2021 and, following the Autumn Statement 2023 extension, its referral window was stretched to run until June 2026. That window has now passed, so the referral flow that once fed provider caseloads has stopped; the people already on the programme continue their support (typically up to around 12 months), which means delivery tails off rather than ending overnight.
The scale of what is unwinding matters for anyone planning a workforce around it. Restart took in roughly 1.2 million referrals across England and Wales between June 2021 and the end of April 2026 (DWP Restart statistics). That volume was delivered largely by a small number of national and regional prime contractors and their supply chains, staffed by sizeable caseload teams. As the referrals stop and existing cases work through, those teams contract — and the experienced advisers within them come onto the market. If you have ever tried to hire an employment adviser during a live Restart mobilisation, you will know how tight that pool was; the transition is loosening it.
What is replacing Restart — Connect to Work and Get Britain Working?
Two things, working at different levels. Connect to Work is the concrete successor programme on the ground; Get Britain Working (with Pathways to Work) is the wider policy frame that sets the direction. The table below summarises where each stands as of July 2026.
| Programme | What it is | Status (July 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Restart Scheme | DWP-contracted employment support delivered by large national/regional prime providers and their supply chains | Winding down — extended referral window ran to June 2026; effectively closed to new referrals, with existing participants finishing their support |
| Connect to Work | Locally-commissioned, voluntary supported-employment programme (using the Individual Placement and Support / Supported Employment Quality Framework models) for disabled people, those with health conditions and people with complex barriers to work | Rolling out area by area across England and Wales through 2025–26, commissioned by clusters of local authorities acting as "Delivery Areas" |
| Get Britain Working / Pathways to Work | The wider reform agenda from the March 2025 Green Paper — reshaping employment and health support and the jobs-and-careers offer | The strategic direction of travel replacing standalone, nationally-contracted schemes like Restart |
The design difference is the part that reshapes staffing. Restart was a nationally-contracted, payment-by-results programme run through a handful of primes. Connect to Work is commissioned locally — clusters of local authorities hold the funding and either commission or build the service themselves — and it is voluntary and supported-employment-led, aimed at disabled people, those with health conditions and people facing complex barriers. Government guidance frames it around roughly 100,000 people supported over the life of the programme (gov.uk Connect to Work grant guidance, accessed 2026-07-02). It is worth noting the machinery has moved too: since 16 September 2025 the skills brief sits alongside employment support in the Department for Work and Pensions, so skills and welfare-to-work are being planned under one roof for the first time in a while.
What does the reset mean for how providers staff delivery?
This is where the information most providers actually need lives. A shift from one big national contract to many local commissions doesn't just move logos around — it changes the shape of the workforce you need and where you need it.
Three practical effects stand out from our day-to-day work recruiting across the sector:
- Provider footprints redraw around Delivery Areas. Because local authority clusters commission Connect to Work, the map of who delivers what is being redrawn area by area. A provider that held national Restart volume may now win in some Delivery Areas and not others, which turns a single large workforce question into a series of local ones — build a team here, redeploy there, and staff to a footprint that is still settling.
- Demand tilts toward the supported-employment skill set. Restart caseload teams were built for high-volume, results-driven throughput. The Individual Placement and Support model behind Connect to Work is different work: intensive, holistic, one-to-one support for people with health conditions and complex barriers, following the "place then train" logic. That pulls hiring demand toward employment specialists, employment advisers, employability advisors and key workers who can carry a smaller caseload well, work with employers to secure and sustain placements, and hold a relationship over time.
- Timing is uneven. Restart delivery is tailing off while Connect to Work goes live on local timelines that don't all line up. That mismatch creates exactly the kind of short-term capacity gap — cover a mobilisation, hold delivery while a permanent structure is confirmed — where interim and fixed-term hires earn their keep.
None of this removes the perennial employability hiring challenge; it re-points it. The wider recruitment pressures across FE, skills and employability — a tight pool of experienced advisers, salary expectations that have moved, hybrid expectations — still apply. What the reset changes is which roles are scarce and where they need to be.
If you are standing up delivery in a new Connect to Work Delivery Area and need advisers on the ground before your go-live date, that is precisely the brief our team is built for.
Which employability roles are in demand now?
The clearest signal from the transition is a move away from large, uniform national caseload teams toward locally-based, relationship-led roles. In practice, the briefs coming through most often are for:
- Employment advisers / employability advisors — carrying a caseload of participants, coaching, action-planning and moving people toward and into work.
- Employment specialists (IPS) — the supported-employment specialist role at the heart of Connect to Work, combining participant support with active employer engagement to secure suitable jobs.
- Key workers — holding the relationship for people with the most complex barriers, coordinating the wider support around them.
- Employer engagement / job brokerage roles — the people who open the vacancies advisers place into, and who make "place then train" actually work locally.
What providers look for has shifted with the model. Volume-throughput experience still counts, but for supported-employment delivery, employers increasingly want evidence of genuine IPS or supported-employment practice, comfort working with health conditions and disability, and the local employer relationships that make placements stick. That is a narrower field than the general adviser pool, which is why it pays to line up hiring early rather than at mobilisation. For advisers themselves, the reset is opening a fresh set of locally-based roles as the new programmes stand up.
How should employability providers plan their workforce through the transition?
Plan for a moving footprint, not a fixed one. With Restart delivery tailing off and Connect to Work arriving on local timelines, the workforce question is less "how many advisers do we employ" and more "how do we hold the right capacity in the right places while the map settles." In our experience the providers coming through this well are doing three things: mapping their people against the Delivery Areas they realistically expect to win, using interim and fixed-term cover to bridge the gap between a Restart wind-down and a Connect to Work go-live, and moving early for the scarce supported-employment specialists rather than competing for them at the last minute.
The permanent-versus-interim balance is worth thinking about deliberately here, because the reset creates a genuine case for both — permanent hires for the settled core of your delivery, interim capacity for the uncertain edges. It is the same judgement providers are already making elsewhere in the sector, as we cover in our piece on permanent versus interim hiring for hard-to-fill delivery roles. And because skills and employment now sit together under the DWP, the same providers are increasingly weighing how their skills and apprenticeship delivery is staffed alongside their employability provision — one workforce conversation, not two.
How Aptitude can help
We recruit across the employability, skills and welfare-to-work sector, so we understand how commissioning changes reshape a workforce — because we track the roles that move when programmes like Restart give way to Connect to Work. If you are building adviser capacity for a new Delivery Area, holding delivery through a wind-down, or trying to secure scarce supported-employment specialists before a go-live, that is the conversation we are built for. See the employability and skills sectors we cover and our advice for employers, and get in touch for a confidential chat about your delivery plan.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Restart Scheme still taking new referrals in 2026? No. The Restart Scheme's extended referral window ran to June 2026, so as of July 2026 it is effectively closed to new referrals. People already on the programme continue their support, typically for up to around 12 months, so delivery tails off gradually rather than stopping all at once.
What is replacing the Restart Scheme? Connect to Work — a locally-commissioned, voluntary supported-employment programme rolling out across England and Wales through 2025–26 — sits within the wider Get Britain Working and Pathways to Work agenda from the March 2025 Green Paper. Rather than one national contract, Connect to Work is commissioned by clusters of local authorities in "Delivery Areas."
What is Connect to Work? Connect to Work is a voluntary supported-employment programme for disabled people, people with health conditions and those with complex barriers to work. It uses the Individual Placement and Support and Supported Employment Quality Framework models — intensive, one-to-one, "place then train" support — and government guidance frames it around roughly 100,000 people supported (gov.uk, 2026).
How does the change affect employability recruitment? It moves hiring demand away from large national Restart caseload teams and toward locally-based, relationship-led roles — employment advisers, employment specialists, key workers and employer-engagement staff — often needed in specific Delivery Areas on local timelines. Providers frequently use interim or fixed-term cover to bridge the gap between a Restart wind-down and a Connect to Work go-live.
Which employability roles are most in demand right now? Employment advisers and employability advisors, IPS-model employment specialists, key workers for participants with complex barriers, and employer engagement or job brokerage roles. Supported-employment experience, comfort working with health conditions and disability, and local employer relationships are what set the strongest candidates apart.
