Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to tackle the backlog in work capability assessments.

Ensuring claimants are assessed at the earliest opportunity and reducing customer processing times are a priority for the department. As part of the Covid-19 response we introduced telephone and video assessments alongside existing paper-based assessments.

We resumed face to face Work Capability Assessments (WCA) in May 2021, initially for claimants we were unable to assess by telephone. We continue to work with the assessment provider, Centre for Health and Disability Assessments (CHDA), to maximise the number of WCAs completed.

We have assessed or scheduled for a face to face assessment over 99% of customers who were unable to be assessed remotely, or who were assessed by telephone but for whom a recommendation could not be made.