Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to reduce the time taken to obtain an assessment for employment and support allowance.

Since the Centre for Health and Disability Assessments took over the contract to carry out assessments in March 2015, they have made a number of improvements to claimants’ experience of assessments, including:

• Increasing the number of Healthcare Professionals by around 70% since the start of the contract, thereby ensuring that claimants go through the assessment process more quickly; and,
• Increasing the number of assessment rooms used so that they can see more people at more locations.

As a result of these improvements, the time taken from referral to the supplier to the claimant receiving a face-to-face Work Capability Assessment has more than halved since the start of the contract.