Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the policy paper entitled Transforming Support: The Health and Disability White Paper published on 15 March 2023, when he expects to deliver the Access to Work digital service.

At the moment, the Access to Work service is a mix of newer web applications, older legacy systems and clerical channels – all of which we will transform as we iterate the end to end journey:

• There is currently an online application which we are working to improve. We have ensured it is more usable, fully accessible and gathers information in the right way to enable quick and consistent decision making. This redesigned journey is currently under development and should be available for all users in May/June 2023.
• We have already built a new online claim journey which enables users to submit claims online, view previously submitted claims, and see how much of their grant is left. This is currently being tested with a few hundred users and we expect to expand the scope of this testing, when it will be available for all users, in April/May 2023. This will provide citizens with a new digital channel by which to claim their grant – supplementing the current paper form which they can continue to use if they wish.
• At the same time, we are designing a new digital product to replace the legacy case management system which colleagues currently use to award and pay the grant. This will streamline and structure the decision-making process, ensuring citizens get support faster, as well as delivering an improved experience for colleagues. While this is currently still at the design and testing phase we expect to start development work on this in June 2023.