Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure employers make the right adjustments for disabled people.

In 2022, we delivered legislative changes, which extended fit note certification to other healthcare professionals e.g., Occupational Therapists. Extending certification will allow these professionals to provide more tailored advice to patients to support them to discuss any reasonable adjustments with their employers and stay in, or return to, employment.

Our new digital information service for employers, “Support with Employee Health and Disability”, is currently available to businesses nationally in public live testing. This includes information to help employers make reasonable adjustments.

Access to Work is a demand-led, personalised discretionary grant which contributes to the disability-related extra costs of working faced by disabled people and those with a health condition in the workplace that are beyond standard reasonable adjustments. It does not replace an employer’s duty under the Equality Act to make reasonable adjustments.