Access to Work backlogs creating hardship and uncertainty for disabled people, PAC warns
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- Scheme works for neither disabled people nor employers, Public
Accounts Committee inquiry finds - Workers at risk of losing their
jobs while awaiting DWP decisions as employers may be hiring fewer
disabled people as a result Significant failings in the
Department for Work & Pensions' (DWP) administration of the
Access to Work scheme are having a clear human cost for the very
people it is designed to support. In its report on the scheme, the
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- Scheme works for neither disabled people nor employers, Public Accounts Committee inquiry finds - Workers at risk of losing their jobs while awaiting DWP decisions as employers may be hiring fewer disabled people as a result
Significant failings in the Department for Work & Pensions' (DWP) administration of the Access to Work scheme are having a clear human cost for the very people it is designed to support. In its report on the scheme, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warns that these issues are having damaging consequences for people's employment, income, and health and wellbeing, as well as undermining Access to Work's effectiveness. The PAC's inquiry finds that those who rely on the support provided by Access to Work clearly value it. Such support is intended to help people overcome barriers at work relating to their disabilities or health conditions. However, the PAC's inquiry received written evidence highlighting the hardship, both human and economic, caused by the delays in processing applications. The DWP's target is to process these in 25 working days - it is nowhere near to achieving this, currently telling applicants that it may take up to 37 weeks, nearly ten times longer than this target. Delays were the most frequently reported issue in the PAC's inquiry, with direct and damaging consequences for peoples' employment, income, and health and wellbeing. Case studies shared with the PAC showed workers feared the delays left them forced to choose between risking their jobs or risking their health by working without adjustments, as well as causing employers to hire fewer disabled people. The DWP's expectation is that it will take at least 18 months to clear the applications backlog (around 66k cases in March '26, up from 21,700 in March '22), meaning this hardship will continue for some time. Government announced it would recruit additional staff to help clear this backlog by September '27, but it is not that clear that delays are entirely the result of low staff numbers rather than inappropriate IT, poor administrative processes and a lack of grip. As well as delays, the PAC received a concerning large volume of written evidence describing multiple other failings with the DWP's administration of the scheme. These included poor communication from the DWP, with unanswered emails, unreturned calls, unclear letters, inconsistent advice and customers being passed between different staff without clear ownership. People reported that communicating about the scheme was confusing, inaccessible and, at times, distressing. Another issue is the scheme's inaccessible process, that often requires the kind of administrative capacity that some disabled people are applying for support to access. People reported needing to manage complex forms, long email chains, repeated evidence requests and unclear deadlines. Further, Access to Work is built around assumptions that people are in a stable, full-time job, meaning that evidence suggests that for many others in other kinds of employment, it does not work well. While many of those who provided evidence recognise the scheme's importance in enabling employment, they also say that widespread issues undermine its effectiveness and act as a barrier to disabled people's employment. Written evidence described the system as feeling arbitrary and unreliable and showed, in some cases, support could be reduced or removed without a clear rationale or change in need, and sometimes without warning. The report calls for the DWP's case managers to receive more support to help them make consistent decisions. The PAC's inquiry finds that, in some cases, taxpayers have been paying for workplace adjustments through Access to Work that employers should have been covering themselves. The scheme is intended to provide support over and above the adjustments that employers are legally required to make, funding necessary changes that it is not reasonable for an employer to provide. However, in 2025, the DWP found that some 40% of support funded across 200 cases by the scheme should have been provided by the employer, employee, or the NHS, and the report calls on government to set out clearly what support it expects employers to provide. Clive Betts MP, Deputy Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: It is hard to overstate what value a well-run Access to Work could ideally provide. Many people made clear to our inquiry how highly they value the support that they receive through the scheme. But too often getting that support is taking far too long, and at worst the delays and mismanagement in Access to Work by the DWP seem to be having the reverse impact the scheme is designed to address - actively causing employers to hire fewer disabled people, and causing distress and frustration for those attempting to access the scheme to provide them with the proper support they need. This is a government which has clearly articulated its desire to support people into work. But these goals will not be achieved if one of the primary schemes aimed at doing so is actively alienating people to the point of being as inaccessible as the employee's original un-adjusted work, while making it harder for employers. It was welcome following our evidence session to see the government attempting to address these issues by increasing staff numbers, but without following the recommendations in our report, including supporting those staff properly to make consistent decisions, the delivery of this incredibly important scheme will continue to fail those who require it most. PAC report conclusions It is unacceptable that people do not know how long it will take the Department to process their applications for support. In the written evidence we received, delays were the most frequently reported issue with examples of delay at every stage of the process. The Department has a target to process applications in 25 working days but is nowhere near to achieving this. It currently tells applicants who call its helpline that it may take up to 37 weeks for their applications to be processed. The Department took 109 working days on average to process applications in November 2025, and says that the average has now fallen slightly to 106 days. The Department states that it seeks to mitigate the impact of the delays by prioritising applications from people who are due to start work within four weeks. From October 2023 to November 2025, it processed 30% of applications in fewer than 20 working days. Once an application has been approved, customers can submit claims for reimbursement of costs incurred. The number of outstanding requests for payment had more than quadrupled, to over 30,000, in the three years to March 2025. The Department has since prioritised eliminating the payments backlog, with payments now being issued within the standard of 10 days. Recommendation 1. The Department should, to provide transparency and help manage customers' expectations, publish key performance data each month, including how long on average it is taking to process applications. The Department's expectation that it will take at least 18 months to clear the applications backlog means hardship for individuals and businesses will continue for some time. The backlog of applications for Access to Work support has built up over a number of years, with the number of cases awaiting a decision growing from 21,700 in Mrch 2022 to around 66,000 in March 2026. We received a large number of evidence submissions highlighting the impact of the backlogs and processing delays, such as individuals losing jobs and employers hiring fewer disabled people. In response to the backlogs, the Department more than doubled the number of staff administering the scheme from 247 in 2021-22 to 648 by the end of 2025-26. It plans to recruit another few hundred case managers and to continue efforts to improve productivity. Despite these measures, the Department expects it will still take 18 months to two years to get the applications backlog down to an acceptable level. It expects to meet its target of processing applications within 25 working days after it has cleared the backlog, but would not commit to when it would achieve the target. Following the evidence session, the Department announced that it is recruiting an additional 480 staff as part of a plan to clear the applications backlog by September 2027. While increased staffing may aid the work to lessen the backlog, it is not clear that delays are entirely the result of low staff numbers rather than inappropriate IT, poor administrative process and a lack of grip. Recommendation 2. The Department should urgently develop and publish the plan not only to clear the Access to Work backlog but also to reduce significantly the time taken to process applications. We are concerned about the large volume of written evidence we received that highlighted people's experience of multiple failings in the Department's administration of the scheme. As well as highlighting delays, the people who contacted us described poor communication from the Department and an inaccessible process that often requires the kind of administrative capacity that some disabled customers are applying for support to access. The evidence of those who contacted us suggests that Access to Work does not work well for freelancers, self-employed people or those working part time or with fluctuating earnings because it is built around assumptions of stable, full-time employment. While many of those who provided evidence recognise the scheme's importance in enabling employment, they also say that widespread issues undermine its effectiveness and act as a barrier to disabled people's employment. Recommendation 3. In light of the written evidence the Committee has received, the Department should urgently engage with users of the scheme to uncover any administrative failings beyond delays, and write to the Committee by September 2026, with the full results of that engagement, setting out a roadmap for change, with defined milestones and a clear description of the service standards that users can expect and that the Department can be held accountable for providing. The Department does not know how many cases its case managers can feasibly process in a day, which hampers its workforce planning. Based on a 2021 work study, the Department expected its case managers to be able to process 2.8 cases per day. However, it no longer considers this standard to be achievable because assessing what support an applicant needs has become more complex, with more applicants having mental health and neurodivergent conditions. To improve productivity and the consistency of decision-making, the Department introduced in late 2025 a standard operating process, which it aims to roll out to all its offices by summer 2026. It then plans to complete a new study to assess, given the change in caseload and what it now takes to make appropriate decisions, how many cases on average case managers can process per day. Case managers' productivity is also hampered by the fact that the scheme relies on three IT systems, which require case managers to transfer information manually from one system to another. The Department plans to reform the IT platform by June 2026, integrating the three separate systems. Recommendation 4.
Deciding what workplace support the scheme should fund for each individual applicant is difficult and the Department's case managers need more support to help them make consistent decisions. The Department intends that the support funded through the scheme is tailored to a worker's individual needs. However, assessing what each applicant requires is complex and resource-intensive. In 2024-25, 37,900 people with mental health or learning conditions received Access to Work funding, up from 11,200 in 2018-19. The nature of mental health and neurodivergent conditions, in tandem with changes to the nature of work, make it challenging for case managers to assess what workplace adjustments an applicant needs. People who provided written evidence describe the system as arbitrary and unreliable, with support being reduced or removed without a clear rationale, change in need and sometimes without warning. The Department acknowledges that its focus on processing cases quickly in order to clear the applications backlog has resulted in some decisions not being consistent with the principles it has set to guide funding decisions. To improve decision-making, the Department has introduced new training for its staff, for example about the questions they should ask applicants, but we consider that case managers would benefit from more support and guidance to help them make consistent decisions. Recommendation 5. The Department should set out what more it plans to do to support its case managers, including improving its guidance to better support staff in assessing what support should be funded for people with a wide variety of health conditions. In some cases, taxpayers have been paying for workplace adjustments that employers should have been covering. The Department intends that the Access to Work scheme provides support over and above the reasonable adjustments that employers are legally required to make. It says that the scheme should fund those adjustments that are necessary but that it is not reasonable for an employer to provide, and notes that what is reasonable will vary according the nature of the employer. The Department is concerned, however, that some employers, particularly large ones, do not do enough to meet their legal obligations under the Equality Act 2010, and that the scheme may be filling the gaps. In its 2024 employer survey, the Department found that 80% of employers were taking action to support disabled staff. However, it believes there is much more that employers need to do in many cases to reach the standard of the best. In 2025, the Department found, from a review of 200 cases, that some 40% of support funded by the scheme should have been provided by the employer, the employee or the NHS. Recommendation 6.
The Department has not done enough to generate evidence on the value for money of the scheme. The Department acknowledges that it does not know whether the scheme provides value for money. It undertook qualitative research some time ago in 2009 and 2018 to gather the views of individuals and employers. This found that the scheme has a range of benefits and helps to create a level playing field in the workplace. The Department states it has assessed, based on unit costs, that the scheme would need an additionality of 23% to break even that is, 23% more people being in work than would otherwise be the case. It told us that it is quite unlikely that the scheme pays for itself fiscally, but stressed the scheme's wider benefits to society and individuals. The Department says it cannot ethically undertake a formal value for money evaluation due to the need for a control group, which would effectively mean denying support to some people to create a comparison group. However, we consider that the Department could do more to model the benefits of the scheme, for example in terms of reduced benefit expenditure and increased tax revenue if people are in work. Recommendation 7.
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