Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people used Access to Work support in 2024; for what reasons; and what the cost to the public purse was of this.

The most recent complete financial year of data available in the published Access to Work official statistics is 2023/24: Access to Work statistics: April 2007 to March 2024 - GOV.UK.

In 2023/24, around 61,630 people received a payment for any Access to Work provision and total expenditure across all provision was £257.8 million.

We have interpreted reasons for using Access to Work as being the primary medical condition reported by the individual. In 2023/24, the largest Access to Work customer group in terms of number of payments, by primary medical condition was those with a ‘Mental health condition’, who account for 27% (16,560) of the total number of customers. Those with the primary medical condition ‘Learning disability’ are the second most common group and make up 11% of customers (6,720 people). Those who are ‘Deaf or hard of hearing’ are in receipt of the highest proportion (30%) of total Access to Work expenditure.

The Department intends to publish data for the financial year 2024/25 in the next official statistics publication which has a provisional publication date of September or October 2025.