Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reasons Access to Work claim handlers make separate payments to customers who have multiple such allowances rather than making a single payment.

We have interpreted this question to relate to the current process for making payments to customers.

At present, once an award has been agreed, individual costs are reimbursed retrospectively rather than a single lump sum payment being issued in advance.

We recently conducted a voluntary trial of a cash ‘Personal Budget’ model for Access to Work awards, which tested the response of Access to Work users to more direct control of their awards. We are using evidence from this trial to develop a further trial of personal budgets which we intend to launch shortly.