Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many disability employment advisers have been employed by her Department in each of the last five years.

The number of disability employment advisers employed by the department in March:-

2018 was 465

2019 was 441

2020 was 546

2021 was 479

Please note that we only have figures back to March 2018 because around that time we updated our business systems and any figures before this update are no longer available. The demand for DEA’s in March 2020 was 500 and this coming year is 1000 so we will be recruiting extra staff to meet this target by March 2022.

The government will boost the number of specialist advisers dedicated to helping disabled jobseekers to secure and stay in work, with an additional 315 Disability Employment Advisor (DEA) roles to be in jobcentres across the UK by May 2021.