Service Hubs Appendix

The Service Hubs policy establishes a permanently funded, physically present civic anchor in every outward postcode in Great Britain. Each Hub is operated by the local council, funded from a dedicated national grant that sits outside the per-capita property tax distribution, and designed to host a broad spread of community functions on a single site: front-door public services, digital identity assistance, council specialist rotations, commissioned independent advice, public Wi-Fi, study and meeting space, and a place for residents to find their way through the rest of the Prosperity 2030 architecture.

This appendix sets out the services Hubs deliver, their staffing and hours, the council sponsorship arrangement, physical dimensions, unit operating costs across a four-tier estate, the capital fit-out programme, and the expansion that happens at each Hub when the local Jobcentre Plus converts to a Skills Centre.

The civic anchor model

A Service Hub is not an advice centre. It is the visible public-service presence in a postcode, the place where the civic offer of the state and the council reaches the resident in physical form. Treating Hubs as advice-only buildings would understate their function and miss the operational opportunity to co-locate with the existing community estate that councils already hold.

In practice, the great majority of Hubs will be co-located with existing council and community facilities: libraries, community centres, youth clubs, sports centres, council-owned halls, repurposed warming and cooling centres, and underused communal spaces inside social housing estates. The Hub funding flows into these existing buildings as enhancement money — covering the additional staffing, opening hours, IT, and partition work needed to support the Hub function — rather than building new dedicated centres. This treatment yields three practical advantages. It avoids the capital cost of new construction. It brings revenue funding to a network of underused or partly funded civic facilities that would otherwise require separate budget lines. And it builds the Hub on top of the trust and footfall those facilities already carry.

The civic offer of each Hub includes free public Wi-Fi, study space for school-age children between the end of the school day and the return of working parents, rentable rooms for community groups and local democracy events, accessible toilets, and a social space that operates without a transactional purpose — people may come in for information, for a cup of tea, to meet a neighbour, or to use the Wi-Fi, without needing a problem to solve.

The advice and benefits functions sit within this civic envelope rather than defining it.

The two-desk architecture

Service Hubs absorb two functions from the closing Jobcentre Plus network that are functionally distinct and that current practice has unhelpfully fused: the benefits administration function (the “police” role — claim processing, payment, conditionality monitoring, sanctions, work-search verification) and the advice and advocacy function (the “nurse” role — help to claim, appeal support, mandatory reconsideration, debt advice, housing advice, immigration advice, employment advice).

These are not two variants of the same job. The benefits administration function holds statutory power over the claimant. The advice function represents the claimant against that statutory power, including in appeals where the two functions are on opposite sides of the same case. Citizens Advice has operated arm’s-length from DWP throughout its history for exactly this reason; the same separation is built into the Hub design.

Hubs deliver this as same building, two desks, distinct accountabilities:

• The benefits administration desk is staffed by paid council or DWP-funded officers (former JCP work coaches who chose the benefits-admin path), funded from the redirected Jobcentre Plus operational envelope, accountable through DWP and the local council for statutory delivery.
• The advice desk is staffed by commissioned independent advisors — the local Citizens Advice charity as default lead, supplemented by specialist providers (Shelter, Law Centres, StepChange, accredited immigration advisers) — funded through commissioned contracts from the council, accountable to their independent governance and to the council as commissioner.

A citizen who walks in with a Universal Credit problem can approach either desk depending on whether they need to file or to fight. They are never forced to ask the person holding the sanction power to also represent them.

The advice function is supported nationally by the statutory adoption of Citizens Advice national as the public information and advice infrastructure body. The current Citizens Advice national service company — which has operated for decades on project-by-project grant funding scattered across DWP, MaPS, and BEIS — is placed onto statutory footing as a stable national institution, funding the operations that have always been de facto national public infrastructure: the telephone advice service, the AdviserNet content engine, adviser training and accreditation, the consumer service, national policy and research, and a single online backup helpline that every local Hub draws on for cases beyond the local advisor’s specialism, for out-of-hours coverage, and for triage when the Hub is full or closed. The cost of statutory adoption sits within the Service Hubs operating envelope at the national level: ~£0.04–0.07 billion per year net new on top of the redirected DWP/MaPS/BEIS grants the new body absorbs. The local Citizens Advice charities remain independent federation charities, commissioned by councils as default lead at the local Hub advice desk, and continue to draw on the national infrastructure for training, accreditation, and the backup helpline.

Common services

The Hub estate offers a layered service stack. Every Hub provides the core offer at all opening hours; rotating specialist days bring district-level expertise on a published weekly cycle; commissioned advice runs on its own rota set by the lead advice provider; and state benefits administration operates on DWP standard hours.

Core offer (permanent at every Hub):

Reception, signposting, and triage. Digital identity verification and help. Public Wi-Fi and study space. Rentable community meeting rooms. Help with online forms and council interactions. Information on local services, opportunities, and democratic participation.

Rotating council specialists (typical district pattern, exact rota set by council):

Housing officer (allocations, repairs, anti-social behaviour). Welfare benefits liaison and council liaison on the property tax per-capita allocation. Planning enquiries and pre-application advice. Environmental health (food, housing, noise). Public health and social prescribing. Children’s services duty liaison. Adult social care first contact. Trading standards and consumer issues. Library service for Hubs that are not library co-located.

Commissioned independent advice (CAB local as default lead, supplemented by specialists):

Help to claim and benefits appeals. Debt advice (MaPS-funded, delivered locally). Housing advice (homelessness, possession, disrepair). Immigration advice (OISC-regulated providers). Employment advice (tribunal preparation, settlement). Civil law signposting via Law Centres or pro bono networks.

State benefits administration (in Hubs that have absorbed the local JCP function):

Universal Credit claim processing and verification. Payments queries. Claimant commitment and work-search monitoring. Sanctions administration. Disability benefits liaison.

Opening hours

Minimum opening hours are set nationally; Hubs may operate beyond the minimum where local need and council capacity justify it.

Hub Wi-Fi and rentable-rooms availability typically extends beyond core staffed hours where the host building (library, sports centre, community hall) is open longer than the Hub function itself.

Hub tiers

The estate falls into four tiers reflecting catchment density and operational scale. The blended average operating cost across the estate fits the £0.80 billion per year envelope set out in the macro cashflow.

The quantity distribution is indicative and reflects the underlying density profile of UK outward postcodes. Councils will refine the tier of each Hub in their area against local population, deprivation, and existing civic estate availability.

Staffing and specialist rotation

Each Hub has a permanent core team that delivers the front-door function, supplemented by rotating district specialists who visit on a published cycle, commissioned advisors who operate on their provider’s own rota, and (where the local JCP has converted) benefits administration staff funded from the redirected JCP envelope.

The permanent core team scales by tier:

Council specialist rotation is the operational backbone of the model. A district with eight Hubs runs a single housing officer across all eight on a Monday–Thursday cycle, with each Hub publishing its specialist day so residents know that “Tuesdays are housing day at the Crouch End Hub” and “Wednesdays at Hornsey.” A single 1 FTE specialist becomes 0.125 FTE present at each of eight Hubs — a level of specialist availability per Hub that would be unaffordable if every Hub staffed its own. The same logic applies to planning, environmental health, public health, social prescribing, children’s services duty, and adult social care liaison.

Volunteers supplement the paid team across all tiers — supporting digital inclusion, language interpretation, community signposting, study-space supervision, and the social-space function. The volunteer coordinator role manages recruitment, DBS, supervision, training, and rota. The civic-anchor framing of Hubs makes them attractive volunteer destinations in a way that benefits-administration-focused centres would not be.

Salary calibration reflects council, library service, and community-sector rates rather than NHS clinical equivalents. Hub Managers are positioned at Library Service Manager or Community Centre Manager level (£36–42k); reception and triage staff at council customer-services band (£24–28k); Digital ID and navigation officers at council technical-support level (£26–30k).

Physical dimensions

Minimum viable Hub (Rural tier): approximately 40 sqm. A defined Hub area within a host community building — typically a corner of a village hall, a back room of a library, a partitioned section of a community centre. Furnished with a reception/signposting desk, two seating areas, one private advice booth, two IT terminals with Digital ID equipment, and visible Hub signage. Wi-Fi and accessible toilets are shared with the host building.

Standard Hub: approximately 120 sqm. A defined Hub presence usually occupying a wing or floor of an existing council or community building. Layout typically includes:

• Reception and triage area (20–25 sqm)
• Two private advice meeting rooms (10–12 sqm each)
• Digital ID and IT terminal area (10–15 sqm)
• Open social and waiting space (25–35 sqm)
• Small office for core staff (10–15 sqm)
• Storage, kitchenette, accessible WCs (typically shared with host)

Inner-city Hub: approximately 220 sqm. A larger presence often occupying a dedicated floor or substantial part of a council building. Layout adds:

• Larger reception with multiple service points (35–45 sqm)
• Three to four private advice rooms (10–12 sqm each)
• Dedicated Digital ID suite (20 sqm)
• Larger social/community space (50–60 sqm)
• Study and homework area with separate quiet zone (15–25 sqm)
• One rentable meeting room (15–20 sqm)
• Hub office and back-of-house (20 sqm)

Major urban Hub: 300 sqm and above, frequently considerably larger where the Hub is integrated into a sports centre, library, or repurposed civic building. Adds additional advice rooms, larger community space, multiple rentable meeting rooms, and capacity for the absorbed Jobcentre Plus benefits administration function once the local Skills Centre conversion is complete.

Council sponsor relationship

Each Hub is operated by the local council, funded by an annual grant from the national Service Hubs budget. The grant flows by Hub footprint (one per outward postcode) rather than per capita — a smaller postcode with a Hub receives the same grant as a larger one, with the funding level set by the Hub’s tier.

The Service Hubs grant is additional to the council’s per-capita property tax allocation, not deducted from it. Service Hubs are an increment to local government operating capacity, not a reallocation of existing council funds. This is structurally important. It means the cost of standing up a Hub in a small rural postcode does not displace funding from any other council service, and it means residents of larger postcodes are not subsidising the Hub in smaller ones. The Hub footprint follows postcodes; the rest of council funding follows population.

The council’s responsibilities as Hub sponsor include: providing premises in-kind from the council and community estate where available; deploying the specialist rotation across its Hubs from existing council departments; commissioning the independent advice function from CAB local and other accredited providers on long-term contracts (5–10 years); recruiting and managing the Hub core team; meeting opening hours minimums for each Hub’s tier; and accounting to the council assembly under the reformed Local Democracy arrangements for the operation of the Hub network in the district.

Councils that wish to enhance their Hub offer beyond the national baseline — extended opening hours, additional specialist days, larger premises, enhanced civic programming — may do so from their general operating budget or from a local property tax precept set under the Local Democracy arrangements. The national grant defines the floor, not the ceiling.

Councils that fail to meet the Hub operating standards published in the Service Hubs Act face a graduated escalation: enhanced monitoring; commissioning support from the national Service Hubs office; in the limit, direct national operation of Hubs in the council’s area at the council’s cost. The default expectation is that councils are competent operators of their Hub network; the escalation mechanism exists to address the small minority of cases where they are not.

Unit operating costs

The four-tier model produces the following blended annual operating cost across the estate. All figures exclude capital fit-out (a separate one-off line, set out below). Premises costs reflect predominantly in-kind council provision rather than open-market rent.

Rural / village tier (~600 Hubs):

Standard tier (~1,600 Hubs):

Inner-city / dense urban tier (~600 Hubs):

Major urban / city centre tier (~200 Hubs):

Blended estate cost at steady state:

Fits the £0.80bn budget envelope set out in the macro cashflow. Headroom for fit-out repair, hub-specific contingency, and inter-year variation is held centrally rather than per-Hub.

Capital fit-out

Capital fit-out is a one-off cost per Hub, drawn from the rollout-period capital allocation rather than the annual operating envelope. The light-touch approach — predominantly furniture, partition work, IT and Digital ID kit, signage, and accessibility upgrades within existing council buildings — keeps the capital programme modest.

Central estimate: ~£240m spread across the five-year rollout, averaging £48m per year. This sits within the rollout-period capital envelope alongside the CFC fit-out programme and other one-off transition costs, and should appear as a discrete capital line in cashflow versions from v53 onwards.

Skills Centre conversion expansion

When the local Jobcentre Plus converts to a Skills Centre under the parallel Skills Centres Act programme, the Service Hub absorbs the benefits administration and employment advice functions that the JCP previously held. The Skills Centre takes on the employer-of-record, dispatch, training commissioning, and labour-pool functions; the Hub takes on the citizen-facing administrative and advisory functions.

This absorption brings:

• Funded staff: 4–8 former JCP work coaches and administrative officers per converted Hub, funded from the redirected JCP envelope (national estimate £0.50–0.70bn per year across the network, additional to the £0.80bn Hub baseline).
• Additional space requirement: typically 50–100 sqm of additional Hub floor area for benefits administration desks, additional advice rooms, and back-office processing space.
• Extended opening hours: benefits administration is open at DWP standard service hours, which may extend the Hub’s operating envelope.
• Additional commissioned advice load: help-to-claim and benefits appeals volume rises sharply, and the council-commissioned advice budget (CAB local lead) expands proportionally from the redirected envelope.

Commissioning floor for independent advice. A statutory minimum of 10% of the absorbed JCP operational envelope at each converted Hub is directed to commissioning independent advice — from the local Citizens Advice charity as default lead, supplemented by other accredited specialist providers. At steady state across the 3,000-Hub network, this floor delivers approximately £50–70 million a year of stable commissioned advice funding to the local CAB federation, restoring local public funding for face-to-face advice to broadly its level of a decade ago and placing it on multi-year contractual terms rather than the year-to-year discretionary grant model that has driven a decade of branch closures.

Discretionary ceiling. Councils may allocate up to 20% of the absorbed envelope to commissioned independent advice after a converted Skills Centre in their area has been operating for at least two full years and the benefits administration function is running stably from the local Hub. This recognises that as the new arrangements bed in, the share of the envelope needed for state-side administration declines, and the released resource becomes available for the broader advisory function that residents draw on at the Hub. The floor is statutory; the ceiling is a discretion exercised by the council under the reformed Local Democracy arrangements.

The sequencing rule from the Skills Centres design — no JCP converts to a Skills Centre until at least one Service Hub is operational in its catchment — ensures the Hub is in place to receive the function before the JCP closes. This resolves any transitional-arrangement problem.

The expanded Hub’s operating cost increases on conversion — driven by the additional space, staff, and hours — but the increase is funded from the redirected JCP envelope rather than the Hub baseline grant. The net effect on the Hub baseline (£0.80bn) is zero; the net effect on the total Hub operating envelope at steady state is ~£0.50–0.70bn additional. This funding flows through the council as commissioner.

Rollout schedule

The Hub network is delivered over five years on a profile that front-loads rural and standard tiers (lower fit-out cost, faster to stand up, often co-located with libraries and community centres that already exist as host buildings) and reaches the full inner-city and major urban network by Year 4–5.

Year 1 emphasises rural and standard tier Hubs that can stand up within existing council and community estate with minimal fit-out, building national coverage and political momentum early. Years 2–4 deliver the bulk of the rollout including the heavier inner-city and major urban builds, with the fit-out programme spread evenly across these years rather than peaking. Year 5 completes coverage, finalising the remaining inner-city and major urban tier where dedicated buildings are still in fit-out.

The rollout pace is compatible with the Skills Centre conversion timetable — at every point, the Hub network is ahead of the Skills Centre network, satisfying the sequencing rule that requires a Hub operational in the catchment before any JCP converts.

All figures in 2025 prices. Postcode count: 3,000 UK outward postcodes. Cashflow line: Local Service Hubs at £0.80bn/year steady state (Macro Cashflow row 33). Capital fit-out of approximately £0.24bn is a discrete one-off line to be added to cashflow v53.