Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many outstanding Access to Work scheme payments there were in (a) February 2026, (b) October 2025 and (c) April 2025.

Access to Work (AtW) operates as a reimbursement grant, which means that the service or support must be provided before any payment can be made. Once AtW support has been approved, the customer can then submit their claim for payment. Customers have up to nine months to submit claims for their approved costs. As a result, on any individual day, there will always be claims awaiting review and payment. On average, we are currently processing and clearing claims within 13 days. We have plans in place to reduce this to 10 days.

As of the 1st of February 2026, there were 16,389 payment claims being processed.

As of the 1st of October 2025, there were 9,103 payment claims being processed.

As of the 1st of April 2025, there were 28,499 payment claims being processed.

Please note that the data supplied is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal Departmental use only, and have not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard.