Access to Work waiting-list climbs again, despite DWP claims

The number of disabled people waiting for a decision on their Access to Work (AtW) claim has continued to rise, six months after the government insisted it had improved the system and was hiring extra staff.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) claimed last July that its “improvements” had seen “processing times fall in the last year” for those seeking support through the disability employment programme.

But now, unpublished DWP figures show that the number of disabled people waiting for a decision on their AtW claim has risen even further, from 23,289 on 1 June 2023 to 25,063 on 1 December.

This is another eight per cent increase in the waiting-list.

The latest figures were obtained by Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, Vicky Foxcroft.

She told Disability News Service (DNS): “On the one hand, they say they want to support more disabled people and people with long-term health conditions into work, and then on the other hand, they don’t deal with the Access to Work backlog.”

Other figures show that the longest wait for a decision on an AtW application was 354 working days, which DWP said was “due to issues with the claimant gathering and returning the supporting evidence needed to verify details of the case before it could be further progressed”.

But Foxcroft said this response “kind of goes to where the problem is” because “it isn’t that simple for people, it isn’t always that accessible… how do they think that that is acceptable?

“They really need to get a grip of it.”

A third set of figures, obtained this week by the Liberal Democrat MP Wendy Chamberlain, shows the number of civil servants employed by DWP to run Access to Work rose from 335 in December 2022 to 494 in December 2023, an increase of nearly 50 per cent in just one year.

But in another response to a written question about the scheme, Mims Davies, the minister for disabled people, told Labour’s Alex Sobel that it would be too expensive (“incur a disproportionate cost”) to provide figures showing how Access to Work applications had risen or fallen since October 2023.

DWP has told DNS that in 2022-23 more than 49,800 people received an Access to Work award, an increase of 36 per cent on 2021-22, while spending increased to £183 million, a real terms increase of 15 per cent on 2021-22.

But DWP refused this week to explain why it thought the number of disabled people on the waiting-list had risen again, and declined to say if Davies would apologise for not getting to grips with the issue.

A DWP spokesperson said in a statement: “The government is committed to supporting disabled people in work, with record numbers – nearly 50,000 people – supported by the scheme in this last financial year.

“We have also recruited extra staff to deal with increased demand which, combined with our new Back to Work Plan, will break down barriers to work for over a million people.”

The concerns over Access to Work inefficiency are long-standing.

A report commissioned by Inclusion London found in 2017 that the scheme was “a cornerstone of the movement for equality and civil rights for Deaf and disabled people in the UK” but had been “beset with so much bureaucratic incompetence and obstructionism in recent years that, in many respects, Access to Work is no longer fit for purpose”.

Last summer, a report from the Commons work and pensions committee criticised Access to Work for being “highly bureaucratic in terms of the evidence and administration of paperwork required to apply for, renew or claim back costs” and described the system as “outdated”.

Picture: Vicky Foxcroft (left) and Mims Davies

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