Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 17 December 2021 to Question 91950, on Access to Work Programme, what interim steps her Department is taking to tackle the delays to Access to Work applications until additional staff are able to help respond to the increased demand.

Access to Work (AtW) are currently receiving an increased level of applications for support and are working through all applications to ensure that they are progressed as soon as possible.

For applications where a customer is due to begin a job in the next 4 weeks, their case will be prioritised and contact made as soon as possible.

All other Case Managers are deployed to work on the oldest outstanding cases and overtime working for AtW staff is also being used.

Business processes have been reviewed, including the Renewals process, resulting in improved clearance times.