Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will re-introduce the six-month extension of Access to Work grant awards for claimants who rely on support workers and are experiencing delays in the processing of their renewal applications.

In response to the increase in Access to Work applications, business processes have been regularly reviewed, including the Renewals process. As part of this, we will now treat applications that are classified as renewals for on-going support as a priority group.

Although this is not an automatic extension of the award, the prioritisation of renewals will enable applications to be cleared more quickly. Where the decision is to put in place a new award, this will be put in place for the longest period appropriate (up to the current 3 year maximum) so that the customer has stability in terms of their award, rather than having to renew again in a very short timeline, as was the case with automatically extended awards.