Universal Credit

(asked on 14th May 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to reduce the backlog of assessments for universal credit.


Answered by
Justin Tomlinson Portrait
Justin Tomlinson
This question was answered on 19th May 2021

For the purposes of this response, I have assumed the Honourable Member is referring to Work Capability Assessments (WCAs) used to assess the health entitlement in Universal Credit when referring to “assessments.”

Throughout the pandemic following the suspension of face to face Work Capability Assessments (WCAs) to protect the health of our customers and staff, we continued to assess people on paper evidence whenever possible and introduced telephone assessments from May 2020, doing so in a cautious and evidence-based way, in order to reduce the risk of incorrect benefit outcomes.

Our priority was and continues to be to get our customers into payment as soon as possible. Therefore, telephone assessments initially focused on claimants who were most likely to benefit from having an assessment i.e. those who were likely to have limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA), with this being the only outcome available. Using a test and learn approach, we expanded the range of outcomes available in telephone assessments during the course of the pandemic and, from February 2021, the full range outcomes have been able. This is enabling us to provide a further telephone assessment to those customers who didn’t get an outcome from their first one. We are also, in parallel, doing a small number of Video Assessments.

We have continuously improved our guidance and processes to minimise the number of customers for whom a telephone assessment is not suitable because of their health condition. Now only a small proportion of customers are unable to undertake a telephone assessment. These customers will be prioritised for a face to face assessment following their resumption this month.

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