Work and Pensions written question – answered at on 12 October 2011.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many work capability assessments of claimants previously in receipt of incapacity benefit were completed in each month of 2011 to date.
The reassessment of existing incapacity benefits customers using the work capability assessment (WCA) was rolled out nationally from February 2011.
Letters are being issued as planned to 11,000 claimants per week informing them that their reassessment is about to commence. To manage the process smoothly, volumes were gradually ramped up from the end of February, and the numbers reached 11,000 per week in May. As at the end of September 2011, approximately 128,000 WCAs have been completed for IB reassessment claimants. After the WCA, the decision on entitlement to benefit is taken by a DWP decision maker.
The Information on the number of WCAs completed above is from the Department's Management Information System. It relates to those assessments where Atos have made a recommendation based on either a face to face assessment or cleared by scrutiny of the customer's medical questionnaire. It does not include those customers whose WCA recommendations were returned to Job-centre Plus because they had not complied with the process.
A monthly breakdown of the management information is not reliable because the data is captured by week. This means that for those weeks that cross over a month end the data cannot be attributed to any particular calendar month. In addition, as it was never the intention to publish this information, it has not been subject to the same rigorous quality assurance processes that are used for official statistics and as a result they should be used with a degree of caution.
Due to the overall length of the incapacity benefits reassessment process, information on the entire process including the final outcomes and subsequent destinations of claimants being reassessed is not yet available. Individual level data are being collected, but it will take time to complete because of the overall length of the reassessment process. The Department plans to publish data on the outcomes of the reassessment process but only once it has been quality assured and is considered robust.
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